
Class 1)1) 20G 



GERMANY 



AND 



THE REVOLUTION 



BY 

PROFESSOR^GOERRES, 

LATE EDITOR OF THE RHENISH MERCURY. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL GERMAN, 

By JOHN BLACK. 



LONDON : 
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, 

PATERNOSTER-ROW. 

1820. 






&%* 



Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, 
Printers- Street,, London. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



± he conferences at Carlsbad, and the pro- 
ceedings of the Diet of Frankfort, which 
immediately followed them, filled Ger- 
many with consternation and alarm, and 
threw a damp over the public mind through- 
out the rest of Europe. The resolutions of 
the Diet were completely at variance with 
the spirit of the present age, and what was 
generally understood to be the opinions and 
sentiments of the great body of the people 
of Germany. They may be said to form 
the first overt act of an sera which must 
terminate either in the most unqualified 
despotism, or in a revolution in Germany ; 
and they cannot therefore be viewed with 
indifference by other nations. 

The Resolutions in question have been 
inserted in all the journals of this country, 
a 2 



IV PREFACE. 

and as they are yet fresh in the public re- 
collection, it is unnecessary to enter here 
into any particular account of them. It 
may be enough to state, that they put an 
end to all the hopes of constitutions which 
the people had been led to entertain from 
the thirteenth article of the Federal act ; 
that they struck at the independence of the 
universities ; that they placed the press in 
a state of the most abject thraldom ; and 
that they established a secret tribunal at 
Mentz, with the most ample inquisitorial 
powers, to the dungeons of which suspected 
persons were to be conveyed from every 
corner of Germany, with the view of com- 
pletely extirpating every vestige of liberty 
and independence. If any thing were 
wanting to place the character of these re- 
solutions beyond the possibility of doubt, 
it was supplied by the famous circular from 
the cabinet of Berlin to its ambassadors at 
foreign courts, in which the most arbitrary 
and despotic sentiments are unequivocally 
avowed. 

But these public acts, although they 
throw a strong light on the views and sen- 
timents of the sovereigns of Germany, and 



PREFACE. 



prove that great dissatisfaction prevails 
there, leave us altogether in the dark as 
to the particular grounds and causes of the 
dissatisfaction, respecting which little is 
known with certainty in this country. 
Germany is a world within itself, to which 
the south of Europe and even this country 
are in a great measure strangers. No lan- 
guage is perhaps the depository of such 
stores of information on all subjects as that 
of Germany. Literature and philosophy 
are assiduously and extensively cultivated 
by the Germans, and the multitude of new 
publications entered twice every year in the 
Leipsic catalogues fill all strangers with 
astonishment. But the difficulties which 
the acquisition of the language presents to 
the natives of the south of Europe, and 
even to the people of this country (though 
the English and German are radically kin- 
dred languages) are such that the know- 
ledge of it is yet very rare, and will hardly 
ever become general among them. From 
this ignorance of the language proceeds 
an ignorance of the state of the country 
and the feelings and opinions of the peo- 
ple. The meagre extracts from journals, 

a 3 



VI PREFACE. 

which occasionally appear in the French 
and English newspapers, serve to whet 
curiosity rather than to gratify it. 

The work of which I here submit a tran- 
slation to the public, is calculated to afford 
that information respecting Germany which 
is most wanted at the present moment. It 
contains a masterly review of the conduct 
of the different governments from the over- 
throw of Napoleon down to the present 
time, and of the sentiments and opinions 
of the different parties, during the same 
period. The author, M. Goerres, is held 
in high estimation in Germany, as a literary 
and political writer, and from his connec- 
tion with various individuals, high in station 
and influence, he was amply qualified for 
the task which he undertook. The work 
has been already partially translated in 
French, and, according to the German 
journals, it has been translated even into 
the Swedish language. The author was 
the editor and principal writer of the Rhe- 
nish Mercury, a journal of the greatest 
influence in Germany, and well known in 
this country, which was suppressed in the 
commencement of 1816 by the Prussian 



PREFACE. Vll 

Government. He is a native of Coblentz, 
where the Rhenish Mercury was published. 
On the formation of the Cis-Rhenan Re- 
public, he was named by his fellow citizens 
a member of the committee in whose hands 
the government was vested, and hewas after- 
wards appointed one of the deputies sent 
from the Rhine to Paris to effect the union of 
the Cis-Rhenan with the French Republic. 
He is allowed, even by those who disapprove 
of his opinions, to be a most honourable 
and upright man, and no individual enjoys 
in a greater degree the confidence of his 
countrymen. 

The following summary of his literary 
and political merits, from the pen of the 
celebrated Renjamin Constant, may not be 
unacceptable to the reader : — 

" When I resided in Germany six years 
ago, I anxiously wished to become person- 
ally acquainted with M. Goerres, or to 
correspond with him. His extensive know- 
ledge, his high fame as a professor and 
author, the works which he published on 
the religions of antiquity, induced all tra- 
vellers who possessed a regard for science 
and learning to visit him. Though he 

a 4 



Vlll PREFACE. 

declared himself against us during our vic- 
tories, his motive justifies him in the eyes 
of every impartial Frenchman. He de- 
fended the independence of his country. 
He rendered the greatest services to Ger- 
many. He wrote for Prussia and for his 
King when they were weighed down by an 
oppressive yoke. Without Goerres, without 
Arndt, without Jahn, the kingdom of the 
great Frederick would now probably be in 
the condition to which it was reduced by 
the defeats of 1806. Whoever has truly 
served his country has claims on our ho- 
nour." 

Of the importance attached to the work 
of M. Goerres, in Germany, a better proof 
cannot be afforded than the strict pro- 
hibitions against printing or selling it, 
which have been repeated in every corner 
of that country; and the persecution 
which it has drawn down on the author. 
The work was confiscated, though a 
number of copies had previously found 
their way to the public, and the following 
order was issued by the King of Prussia 
for the seizure of his papers: — 



PREFACE. IX 

To Lieutenant- General von Hacke, and the 
Minister* of State Von Ingersleben. 

" The culpability of Professor Goerres, 
who, in his work committed to the press, 
entitled " Germany and the Revolution," 
notwithstanding he enjoys from the libe- 
rality of the State a salary of 1800 rix-dol- 
lars, has not refrained from making use of 
the most disrespectful language towards his 
own and foreign sovereigns ; and, under the 
appearance of warning the people against 
revolution and illegal violence, and recom- 
mending peace, has endeavoured, by the 
most audacious censure of the measures of 
government, to fill the people with rage 
and discontent, is so evident, that I hereby 
commission you to seize the whole of his 
papers, and to transmit them under Seal to 
the minister Von Schuckman. 

" Frederick William." 

" Berlin, 30th Sept. 1819." 

The seizure of the papers of M. Goerres 
was to have been accompanied by his arrest ; 
but he contrived to make his escape in time 
to Strasburg. Shortly after his entrance 



X PREFACE. 

into France, the following letter appeared 
in the Parisian journals : — 

Sir, Strasburg, Oct. 25. 1819. 

The French Papers have occupied them- 
selves of late with the persecution I have 
been subjected to, on account of my work, 
Germany and the Revolution, — and I have 
to express my satisfaction with the honour- 
able manner in which all of them, either 
in writing or in remaining silent, have 
acted towards me on this occasion. — 
Seeing myself arbitrarily deprived of the 
benefit of the Civil Law, I felt myself 
obliged to throw myself under the protec- 
tion of the Law of Nations, not to oppose 
authority which I respect, but to place it 
in an impossibility for its own interest, of 
proceeding otherwise in this cause than 
by legal means. Yes, during the war, I 
frequently and forcibly raised my voice 
against France ; but in this I followed the 
dictates of duty and honour ; I should 
even have fought with arms in my hands, 
if an occasion had presented itself; but in 
defending the liberty, the honour, and 
independence of my country against a 



PREFACE. XI 

foreign yoke, I never forgot what man 
owes to man. After the passage of the 
Allies, when the Russian police first, and 
the Prussian police afterwards, brought 
from twenty to thirty French employes to 
Dresden and Wetzlar as suspected persons, 
these men and their families, through a 
confidence, which was flattering to me, 
applied in preference to me, though they 
were not ignorant of my political opinions, 
and I procured for them, from the 
governor-general of that town, not merely 
their liberty, but assistance to several of 
them to return to their own country. I 
now claim the same hospitality, not as a 
favour, which would be incompatible with 
my honour, but as a right. Even the Be- 
douin exercises this hospitality towards his 
enemy ; and surely it ought to be a law 
for civilised Europe, in times full of 
trouble, party rage, revolutions, unex- 
pected changes, in which no writer, no 
statesman even, has any certainty, that 
what he grants to-day, may not be claimed 
for himself to-morrow. 

" GOERRES." 



XI 1 PREFACE. 

The translation of the work of M. Goer res 
is by no means an easy task. M. Scheffer, 
the French translator, gave only an incom- 
plete translation of rather more than the 
half of it, and abandoned the rest in despair. 
" The German language," he says in his 
preface, " admits of modes of expression 
{tournurei) full of force and energy, which it 
is impossible to convey in French, and no 
writer employs them more frequently than 
M. Goerres, who is justly esteemed one of 
the most eloquent men of his country." 
The English language admits, in common 
with the German, of many combinations 
incompatible with the genius of the French; 
but still such is the flexibility of the German, 
and the extent of its psychological resources, 
that it possesses many words for which there 
are no synonymes in any modern language, 
and of whichit is extremely difficult to convey 
the precise meaning even by periphrasis. I 
have, however, endeavoured to struggle with 
the original as well as I could, and I have 
omitted nothing. The reader who has re- 
flected on the aid which the mind derives 
from language, in enabling it to attain a pre- 
cise knowledge of its conceptions, will know 



PREFACE. Xlll 

liow to appreciate the difficulty of convey- 
ing the meaning of expressions, for which 
we have no synonymes. 

The French translation is accompanied 
by a communication from M. Goerres to 
M. Scheffer, which may be considered as a 
valuable key to many parts of the work. It 
has been on that account prefixed to the 
present translation. 

JOHN BLACK. 



COMMUNICATION FROM M. GOERRES 

TO THE FRENCH TRANSLATOR. 

Having learned that a translation of my 
work was in preparation at Paris, I con- 
ceive myself bound to add a few words, in 
order to establish the point of view under 
which it ought to be considered. 

In the first place it ought to be kept in 
mind, that the situation of public affairs in 
Germany, far from being the same as in 
France, is, in many respects, diametrically 
the reverse. 

In France, the third Estate produced the 
Revolution. Experiencing resistance on 
the part of the other Estates, it destroyed 
their privileges, and triumphed over them 
after a short struggle. When, at length, 
the Dynasty, the Aristocracy, and the supe- 
sior Clergy, emigrated with the ancient his- 
tory, of which they were the principal ele- 
ments ; the Revolution, that had main- 
tained itself for twenty-five years, became 
a new history, which is now struggling 
with the one that has returned. In this 
conflict between new and old interests, the 



XVI COMMUNICATION 

Syncretism*, established and fixed by the 
charter, seeks to consolidate itself by the 
conflict of parties. 

In Germany it is quite the reverse. 
There, it is not the third Estate which has 
produced a revolution ; on the contrary, 
the cabinets have effected a revolution 
under the protection of a foreign power. 
They have expelled the superior clergy 
from the empire, and have shared among 
them their possessions. They have, in the 
same manner, destroyed the high imme- 
diate aristocracy of the empire ; they have 
possessed themselves of their estates. As 
to the nobility, they have, for a long time, 
been in a state of complete subjugation; 
the ancient liberties of the third Estate have 
been unable to resist the encroachments of 
power, aided by foreign bayonets. By the 
same means the Princes also have suc- 
ceeded in destroying the unity of the em- 
pire. To the totality of these usurpations, 
and these acts of despotism, they have 
given the name of Sovereignty. 



* Syncretism Syncretismus, the endeavour to reconcile 
opposite opinions. Trans, 



FROM M. GOERRES. XV11 

Such was the situation of things in Ger- 
many, when, in 1813, the German nation 
rose against this yoke of foreigners. . Hav- 
ing freed themselves from the yoke, they 
soon found that these usurpations of power, 
which the usurpers wished to defend at all 
hazards, formed the principal obstacles to 
their prosperity and their future safety. 

From that moment be^an the struggle 
which agitates Germany in all its elements ; 
the struggle between the ancient and his- 
torical liberties of the third Estate, and the 
pretensions of that Sovereignty, which de- 
fends with all its strength, and with all its 
means, its history of a few weeks, against 
that which has endured for several centu- 
ries, and which the people claim along with 
unity and liberty. 

Such, in a few words, is the true state of 
affairs in Germany, which it is impossible 
to compare with what is observable in 
France. With us, those who avail them- 
selves of the forms and practices of Jaco- 
bins, are the partisans of despotism, while 
the friends of liberty defend, in part, the 
principles of the French Ultras. Hence 
that confusion, which, at first sight, troubles 



XVHl COMMUNICATION 

and confounds the foreign spectator who 
contemplates this movement. 

It is in the conviction of this difference 
of position that my work was composed, 
which has been claimed both by the Libe- 
rals and Ultras, but of which the true cha- 
racter may be easily known by the persecu- 
tion it has drawn down on me. 

As Germany is still in want of a charter 
in which the conflict of parties may be 
conciliated, it is the duty of writers to 
direct their efforts constantly towards this 
point, which alone can bring about a re- 
conciliation. A people who see themselves 
menaced, on the one hand, with subjection 
to the yoke of despotism in their interior, 
without any guarantee from foreign attacks ; 
and who, on the other hand, foresee all the 
horrors of a revolution, ought, from the 
very nature of things, to seek a rallying 
point, to which all parties, notwithstanding 
their animosities, may be obliged to repair, 
except they wish to run the risk of a 
terrible explosion, and the most dreadful 
extremities. 

These few .words will also serve to ex- 
plain the reasons which induced me to 

13 



FROM M. GOERRES. XIX 

declare myself in my country in so ab- 
solute and unqualified a manner against 
the mockery of French liberalism. I am 
convinced that there exists in France a 
powerful party of sincere, disinterested, 
and well-intentioned men, who defend 
whatever is just and true, and form 
the true public opinion of that country. 
He who from an absurd feeling of hos- 
tility should undertake to deny this truth, 
would commit a folly, the consequences of 
which would only fall on his own head. 
But jealous, on the one hand, of the honour 
and independence of my nation, I wished 
it to form individual maxims and signs for 
relations which are peculiar to it ; and I 
wished, on the other hand, to proscribe the 
courtier-like liberalism, which in its servile 
baseness would truckle to every species of 
despotism, and flatter every description of 
power ; and which endeavours in return 
to deceive itself and impose on others 
by the sounding words of liberty and in- 
dependence. 

J. GOERRES. 

Strasburg, 
Oct. 26. 1819. 



Neque sic accipiatis,, tamquam exprobraturus praeterita 
surrexerim. Nam veterem quidem culpam intempestive 
objicere, inimici et alienis erroribus petulanter insultantis 
animi est : probi viri et salutis communis studiosi, pec- 
cata civitatis tegere, aut excusare noalunt, nisi quoties ad 
calamitatem publicam amoliendam, praeteritarum offen- 
sarum iecordatio grande momentum habet. Nam ab 
e^rore quidem omni, homines quum simus, immunes 
haberi velle, nimium et superbum: sed ad eumdem 
Lapidem crebro. impingere ; neque saltern eventu teme- 
ritatem castigante ad cautionem erudhi, id verojam vix 
bene humamm est. Liv. D. u\ L. xii. c. 1 2. 



GERMANY 



AND 



THE REVOLUTION. 



After a violent party struggle of four years* 
a blind and foolish opposition to the claims 
of the age, and partial concessions to them 
on the one hand, and exaggerations of 
various descriptions on the other, things 
have at length come to such a pass, that 
the minds of men throughout all Germany 
are in a state of the most violent excita- 
tion ; and that disposition has become 
universally prevalent, which is usually seen 
to precede great catastrophes in history. 
What the most active, the most crafty, and 
deceitful demagogues, with all their in- 
trigues, could never of themselves have 
effected from below, has been successfully 
accomplished by the dexterous co-operation 



Z GERMANY AND 

of those who have taken the business in 
hand by the long arm of >he lever from 
above ; and thus the peaceful, the tran- 
quilly disposed, the sober-minded, and 
moderate people of Germany, have been 
agitated in all their elements and all their 
depths, and worked up to the utmost 
degree of bitterness and rage. And that 
these agitators may, with the utmost justice, 
lay claim to the greatest part of the honour 
of this achievement, they are now prepar- 
ing with the utmost joy and alacrity to 
supply, in a short space, what little may 
yet be wanting to give the last finish to the 
whole ; that the work, in all its parts, may 
exhibit the hand of a master. As when- 
ever the agitated passions seemed in any 
measure to subside, they have always, at 
the suitable moment, supplied new incen- 
tives to discontent and irritation ; as with 
inimitable dexterity they have contrived to 
find out the weak side of every one, and 
availed themselves of every occurrence of 
the times to apply its sharp edge to the 
sore, or yet imperfectly cicatrised places; 
they have thus actually discovered a secret 
for rousing the whole body of the people, so 



THE REVOLUTION. 



that a common feeling of discontent prevails 
from one end of the country to the other ; 
and the governments are at this time en- 
tangled in a hopeless contest with all that 
is good and noble and energetic, and are 
lost in errors from which they will never 
be able to extricate themselves by the ways 
they have hitherto pursued. As in a sultry 
and oppressive summer-heat, when the sky 
begins to overcast, the dread of the dark 
and boding tempest is unable to extinguish 
the inward longing of nature for the re- 
freshing coolness which follows in its train ; 
in like manner public opinion has now 
almost reconciled itself to all that is most 
dreadful in events, if they only promise to 
relieve us from our present ignominy, and 
open to us a source of pure hope in the 
heavens, the face of which is now obscured 
by a vapour which veils every happy star 
from our sight. Hence those birds of 
presage, harbingers of the approaching 
tempest, the youths who, to remove out of 
the way the base and unworthy in its 
organs, devote themselves to death, fill it 
not with alarm ; nor was it surprised when 
the discovery of a great and wide-spread 

b 2 



GERMANY AND 



conspiracy for the establishment of a Ger- 
man Republic was announced from Berlin, 
because the experience of the last age has 
sufficiently inculcated the knowledge of the 
universal law in nature, that every extreme 
has a necessary and inevitable tendency to 
produce its opposite. Only one thing 
amidst the alarm created by the breaking 
open of trunks, and boxes, the going and 
coming of gens d'armes and police agents, 
the precaution which seemed to have been 
taken purposely, as it were, to trample on 
all judicial forms, the trouble and uneasi- 
ness given to peaceable men, whom the 
least tact or knowledge of the world would 
at once have acquitted beforehand, the ex- 
aminations and sealings of papers, arrests, 
and discharges from arrest ; only one thing 
was wondered at in the midst of all these 
fearful movements, that, while searching for 
traces of secret conspiracies carried on in 
the dark, these profound politicians should 
see nothing of a grand conspiracy, which 
spreads its extensive ramifications over all 
Germany, throughout every rank and age 
and sex; which sits murmuring by every 
hearth, which raises its voice aloud in 



THE REVOLUTION. O 

markets and highways, which is easily per- 
ceived in all its members without any sign, 
and which, without secret heads, and with- 
out impulse from a common centre, works 
constantly in concert and with the very 
best understanding to promote one common 
end; which stares with many thousand open 
eyes into the most hidden recesses, and 
which has many thousand arms constantly 
at command; that conspiracy, namely, in 
which the irritated feelings, the disappoint- 
ed hopes, the wounded pride, the sufferings 
and oppression of the nation, have associ- 
ated themselves together against the rigid 
obstinacy of arbitrary power, the mechanism 
of lifeless forms, the devouring poison of 
despotic maxims of government unconsci- 
ously acted on, the fruit of the corruption of 
the times, and the blindest prejudices ; and 
which conspiracy, powerful and formidable 
to a degree that no former one ever yet 
reached, and growing every day in power 
and activity, is so sure of attaining its ob- 
ject, that the danger will not certainly arise 
from the tardiness, but from the excessive 
rapidity of its progress. 

b 3 



6 GERMANY AND 

In this situation of affairs, till the hand 
which wrote to the French their Mene 
Tekel and Peres in the flames of Moscow, 
shall also write our irrevocable doom in let- 
ters of fire in the heavens, the command 
has gone forth to every man whose senses 
the tumult of the times has not perplexed, 
and who still holds his head in quiet self- 
possession above the agitated waves, to stand 
on the watch-tower of the times, patiently 
to observe their signs, to call out and to 
warn without ceasing. Assuredly there is 
a time for silence and a time for speech. 
When self-conceit boldly bestrides, and 
recklessly gives the rein to the high horse, 
on which it furiously gives chace to every 
lust of the imagination, and every noxious 
passion ; when, forgetting the power of its 
origin and the eternal standard of things, 
irritated by times, which it is unable to 
comprehend, and . still less knows how to 
controul, it loses all presence of mind, and 
madly throws down all the fences by which 
the angry Nemesis is separated from us, 
and not merely breaks through the ethical 
limits of the allowable and the unallowable, 
but even betrays an ignorance of all the 



THE REVOLUTION. 7 

more delicate relations of what is becom- 
ing, and what never can be becoming, and 
proceeds without consistency at one time 
to exercise acts of the most tyrannic vio- 
lence ; and then, having, by such violence, 
forfeited every right, relapses again into 
weakness and yieldingness, and displays 
signs of the most imperturbable placidity : 
in the approach of such a paroxysm, an 
individual may certainly be allowed to step 
quietly aside, confiding in the powerful law 
which God has given to society as well as 
to nature, and which, with tranquil and 
invisible working, and a scarcely percep- 
tible resistance, easily repels the efforts of 
arrogance, and hurries on every excess to 
its own destruction. But when a remis- 
sion again succeeds to the paroxysm, and 
when in favourable moments something 
like self-possession returns ; when the na- 
ture of things has repelled the attack, and 
the metallic band, by which the whole is 
girt round, has only been drawn tighter by 
the shock ; then a word of exhortation may 
again be suitable, and we are commanded 
to speak. All great and general events 
have their internal natural necessity, their 

b 4 



8 GERMANY AND 

transits, their cycles, and their returns ; 
and the frenzy of the present times has 
also its stationary intervals, its periodical 
risings and declensions, and its critical 
moments, and in so far the cause of things 
cannot be altered by human efforts. But it 
is only the passions which fetter us to this 
power of nature. On the other hand, 
whatever of pure thought and undisturbed 
volition is instrumental in the bringing 
about of events, to that extent, they are 
subject to the influence of freedom ; and as 
Providence only during the absence of the 
latter, arms the former against each other, 
like the physician, who, when one of the 
vital powers is in a state of distempered 
activity, calls forth another power from a 
state of repose to make head against it, in 
the same manner, whoever would work 
with salutary effect on a diseased age, must 
first endeavour to introduce a clear light 
into the prevailing confusion of ideas ; and 
then things are so ordered in the world 
that when the mind can look with clear 
intelligence into itself, the daemon-powers 
must even involuntarily become subser- 
vient to it. 



THE REVOLUTION. 9 

The author of these pages, during the 
course of the last war, frequently addressed 
himself to the nation, and acquired its 
confidence. Having afterwards, from mo- 
tives which he has just now in part alluded 
to, withdrawn from the public scene, he yet 
allowed no important occasion to escape 
for impelling, restraining, assisting and 
arresting, censuring: and exhorting his 
countrymen, according as he thought the 
exigencies of the times demanded, in order 
that he might prove himself not unworthy 
of their confidence. A stranger to the fear 
of men, and that timid apprehension which 
would only tell the truth by halves, he has 
always spoken the sentiments of his heart 
without hesitation, and without reservation. 
He has sought only the truth, and whenever 
he was convinced he had found it, he never 
failed to take the liberty of expressing it ; 
for truth without freedom is as a buried 
treasure, " a spring shut up, a fountain 
sealed." * But freedom without the love of 
truth, is the " treasure of wickedness in the 



* Solomon's Song, iv. 12, 



10 GERMANY AND 

house of the wicked, and the scant measure 
that is abominable ;" * the Pallium and 
Palladium of the utmost malice and the 
most refined deceit, as Haman had occasion 
to observe. Holding in small estimation 
what is commonly called worldly prudence, 
but by no means therefore withdrawing 
himself from that higher prudence which is 
compatible with simplicity of heart ; it has 
been his constant endeavour, with the least 
possible deviation, to tread in the path of 
justice, and every day has added strength 
to his conviction, that this path uniformly 
leads most speedily to the object in view. 
Resigning himself in security to the guidance 
of an instinct which has more than once 
been his preservation, perplexing himself 
not with over-anxious enquiries into the 
consequences of action, as for every act 
which has its origin in pure motives, and 
on a view of the relations of things not 
altogether disturbed, there is provided an 
outward room and an effect, while what is 
tortuous uniformly annihilates itself; he has 



Micah, vi. 10. 



THE REVOLUTION. 11 

followed with a tranquil eye its circle in the 
waves, till, extending itself more and more, 
it has at last disappeared in the distance. 
Never renouncing the rights of truth, 
though sometimes, it is said, in the zeal of 
speech, exposing with too little tenderness 
the errors of individuals, he has never been 
seriously attacked, because that internal 
feeling of justice among the Germans, 
which happily can never be altogether ex- 
tirpated from the breast, even of the most 
callous, operated always secretly in his 
favour ; and the wicked who raised their 
arm against him, in the hurry of their 
passions impeding and neutralising the 
blows of each other, always left a course 
open for him between them, through which 
he could pass with safety. The impar- 
tiality with which he surveys the contest, 
must therefore appear as a more particular 
call on him, and a more pointed duty, to 
speak in the language of reason so long as 
it may yet be time, and before swords shall 
become tongues to cut their sentences into 
the raw flesh. Let the following pages 
therefore be considered as a mirror of the 
time, by looking seriously into which, it 



12 GERMANY AND 

may view its own shape and semblance. 
May the spirit which lives in these words, 
be as the warning fire* on the mast of the 
vessel of our country, that it may prepare 
itself for the coming dangers, and either 
seek a secure harbour, or stand out betimes 
to the open sea ! If laid to heart, and received 
in the ground of the present age, which has 
given way in so many places, it may per- 
haps become the seminal principle of a 
better futurity ; if not, it may be considered 
like all that preceded, as an appeal of the 
better part of the present to a future time, 
and as an attempt to preserve its sound 
understanding from evil suspicion, which is 
but too much justified by events. 



When an evil which has been generated 
under the influence of malignant stars, and 

* St. Elmsfeuer, in the original, St. Elmsfeuer or Helen- 
enfeuer, a species of ignis fatuus arising from evaporations 
in ships, which attaches itself to the masts and yards, and 
is considered by sailors as a certain sign of their ap- 
proaching fate. Pliny tells us, that, when in a storm 
two lights appeared on a vessel, the sailors called this 
phenomenon Castor and Pollux, and, when only one 5 
Helena, , Trans. 



THE DEVOLUTION. 1 5 

growing with the nutriment of unfavourable 
circumstances, has every day acquired more 
and more internal consistency, till it at 
length reaches the point of violent explo- 
sions ; if we wish to ascertain, by a satis- 
factory investigation, whether there is any 
possibility by a concurrent effort of guiding 
such a calamity to an advantageous result, 
it will always be best to go back to its 
origin, to the point where it first flowed 
together from a number of hidden springs, 
and to follow it through all the stages of 
its development, till it attains its final 
configuration, and then to oppose the in- 
sight, which we have thus gained, to the 
complicated movements which at present 
constitute one of the main sources of all 
moral and social evil. In proceeding on 
this principle, when we speak of the cala- 
mity of Germany, we must, at least, go back 
to the congress of Vienna, which again has 
reference, no doubt, to relations that en- 
dured for centuries ; but yet, in so far as it 
is a free work of our contemporaries, be- 
comes responsible to the present and future 
times, which, though conscious that it was 
itself the offspring of predecessors pregnant 



14 GERMANY AND 

with mischief, will still justly consider it as 
the fruitful womb of their evils — evils that, 
when once delivered to the light, soon 
found an aliment for their vigorous growth 
in the corruption of the age. 

The hopes and expectations of Germany, 
which were but too miserably disappointed 
in the first peace of Paris, were patiently 
carried to this Congress ; and estimating, 
no doubt, too highly a few years of pass- 
ing elevation as opposed to centuries of 
pitifulness and degeneracy, trod with the 
language of complaint into the midst of 
that assembly. Public opinion expected 
great things from the convocation, which, 
after the downfal of the universal monarchy, 
was here assembled to restore and to build 
up again the ruined fabric of the European 
republic. It was justly thought, that if 
Germany, the central fortress of this com- 
monwealth, were, not re-established on a 
strong and durable foundation, every thing 
like tranquillity and order, peace and equi- 
librium, was quite out of the question in 
all times to come. By looking back into 
history, it was seen that this empire was 
the only true protection and strong hold of 



THE REVOLUTION. 15 

Christendom, and a bulwark against internal 
and external foes, when, secure within itself, 
its active and animated multiplicity was held 
together under the unity of an emperor. 

Hence, from a correct natural instinct, 
most men were led to the opinion, that 
the stone which the enemy refused, ought 
to become the head stone of the corner ; 
that the old idea ought to be revived in the 
new times, and that, strengthened by the 
youthful life which the progress of deve- 
lopment had called forth, it ought to be 
born again and renovated. , It was thought 
that an Emperor might again be placed at 
the head of the empire, with the dignity he- 
reditary in the same family ; and that for the 
protection of freedom under this hereditary 
sway, and the preservation of the opposition 
which had risen up, a German King should 
be placed by his side; that the dukes of 
the empire, its princes, counts, prelates, and 
other dignitaries, should be assembled in 
a Chamber of Peers ; that the commons 
should be assembled in a Second Chamber 
of the Imperial Parliament; and thus, every 
member of the whole, limiting and limited, 
all the dignitaries being made co-ordinate, 



16 GERMANY AND 

no one domineering over the others, and 
all serving with freedom under the same 
head, Germany would have received the 
only constitution permanently adapted to 
the character and way of thinking of the 
nation. After this arrangement, Germany 
would have entered into the community of 
the European states with the whole weight 
of its power and dignity, borne aloft by the 
renewed spirit of its people, and the other 
affairs of the European Republic might then 
have been arranged agreeably to the prin- 
ciples of justice, and the common interest 
of the parties concerned. 

But when the darkness, in which that 
assembly was veiled, began in some measure 
to clear up, the world perceived with asto- 
nishment that there was here no trace of a 
grand and masterly plan in the ground- 
work of the transactions ; the Uranus of the 
old age, emasculated by the Saturn of the 
revolution, wholly ceased to generate, and 
the omnipotent Jupiter, who precipitated 
the latter from the throne, had not yet 
terminated the great conflict. Providence 
had determined, however, that a feeble 
semblance of life should not be formed of 



THE REVOLUTION. 17 

the dry and withered substances above, but 
that the idea should shoot up with luxuri- 
ance from the fresh life below. Hence, 
while the people were carried away by their 
enthusiasm for freedom and independence, 
the courts, by no means participating in the 
intoxication, had prudently secured their 
separate interests in various treaties ; and 
now, when the business of the Congress 
commenced, and the two powers who held 
the fate of Germany in their hands, were 
more especially called on to act together 
in concert, and (making themselves sacri- 
fices, and thereby entitling themselves to 
command sacrifices in return), to proceed 
with mild earnestness and dignified firmness 
in settling with the less powerful the affairs 
of the empire, they were obliged, in order 
to make good their claims, to seek a foreign 
aid, and thus Austria and Prussia ranged 
themselves under English and Russian in- 
fluence. 

There could no longer be any mention of 
Germany ; it had ceased to exist in Europe. 
Austria seized on Italy, Russia on Poland, 
and England on the German Coast, from 
the Elbe to the Downs of Dunkirk; but 



18 GERMANY AND 

Prussia was frustrated in a similar attempt 
on Saxony, and driven to the Rhine. All 
the rest now followed as a matter of course ; 
the more feeble soon began, after the ex- 
ample of the more powerful, to renounce 
the folly of wishing to form a single and 
entire empire ; and when some slight fits 
of bashfulness, occasioned by the presence 
of the obstinate and observing age, were 
once got the better of, all the passions 
began to display themselves, without re- 
serve, in the old game which they had so 
often before played. Although the con- 
queror had previously broken the golden 
frame of the German imperial crown, and 
distributed the pieces as decorations among 
his vassals, the sovereign powers had bound 
themselves to restore the former state of 
things, and the congress were by no means 
entitled to manufacture a new work out of 
the scattered fragments. The courts, one 
and all, it is true, excommunicated the 
great robber of the European society ; but 
they declared his pillage to be lawful prize, 
and made the state of things to which his 
acts gave rise, and the de facto possession, 
the foundation of the future arrangements 



THE REVOLUTION. 19 

in the empire, that, in consequence, re- 
mained dismembered and annihilated. 

And now, in conformity to this principle, 
they proceeded to divide the booty which 
they had gained, and the Imperial City was 
converted into an exchange, where souls 
were weighed and reckoned like pieces of 
money, and where the most bitter strife 
and contention took place in the adjust- 
ment of the shares. And when the disputes 
had proceeded to such length, that the 
swords began to spring from their scab- 
bards, Providence, enraged at the unholy 
doings, sent the Man of the Island among 
them. This individual, on whom eternal 
justice had already exercised her rights, the 
man whom the Pope had anointed, to whom 
all persons had bowed the knee, before 
whom the world had humbled itself, whom 
a conceited age had gazed on as its highest 
organ, and whom, though believing in no- 
thing else, and regarding nothing else, it 
had adored with the most profound devo- 
tion ; who, to shame his idolators to the 
very bottom of their souls, had demon- 
strated his own nothingness in himself 
before their astonished eyes ; and, after 
c 2 



2Q GERMANY AND 

exercising justice on himself and them, had 
withdrawn into an ignominious obscurity : 
this man was once more chosen by the 
enraged heavenly powers, to fill the over- 
whelming cup of scorn to the very brim, to 
become again the scourgeof his own slightly 
improved nation, and to overset the table 
of the royal Jews. 

The nation had already deeply felt the 
ignominy of those transactions, and in the 
disheartening consideration of what experi- 
ence had already produced, and with the 
presentiment of what was still reserved for 
them, all classes of the people thought, as 
the cities of Sicily did, who invited over 
Pyrrhus the Epirot to assist them in obtain- 
ing freedom from the yoke of the Romans, 
when their deliverer attempted to frame a 
still more unsupportable yoke for them : 
in words which Livy has handed down to 
us, in the 18th Chapter of the 14th Book 
of the Second Decade, Irritatis ob hcec animis 
mussare primum homines, mox pedant queri : 
cur igitur prioris status pcenituisset, si nunc 
etiam tolerandaeademforent? frustra vocatum 
receptumque Pyrrhum, si studeat (Emulari 
mores, quos puniturus advenisset. Neque aeri- 



THE REVOLUTION. 21 

®rem ullius injuria sensum esse quam cujus 
auctor habereiur idem Me, qui vindex esse 
debuisset. In the mean time, when the new 
war began, the former enthusiasm was not 
yet entirely extinguished, and a secondary 
note was again struck ; a brilliant victory, 
equalled by few in history, seemed to pro- 
mise to Germany and its revived national 
feeling, the re-acquisition of all that had 
been wrested from it by its enemies for 
many generations ; but, in the second peace 
of Paris, it reaped the first-fruit of its divi- 
sion, which was now sanctioned, and of the 
subaltern state to which the most petty 
selfishness had reduced it ; its integrity 
before the war was not even restored ; the 
few fortresses which were ceded to it, were 
unequal to the defence of its frontiers ; the 
few pecuniary payments stipulated, could 
never atone for the general disgrace : con- 
quered France, strengthened by a constitu- 
tion, came, like all the other powers, more 
powerful than ever out of this struggle ; 
while conquering Germany remained more 
powerless and dismembered than it had 
ever yet been at any former time. 

What the Congress, in haste, had agreed 
c 8 



22 GERMANY AND 

on, was now confirmed, and reduced to 
something like a system. " The new order 
of things in Europe, as one of the illus- 
trious participators in a former well-known 
declaration afterwards formally expressed 
it, was to be a system of connection of 
interests, and of the reciprocal relation of 
duties, the work of the events brought 
about by Divine Providence. A general 
union of all, against every description of 
disturbers of the general tranquillity, was to 
guarantee the permanency of this system ; 
every other alliance entered into from fear 
or ambition in opposition to this union, 
being incompatible with the spirit of the 
age, would only give rise to a conflict of 
faithlessness with fidelity to obligations; and 
the wishes of the nations, and the blessing 
of heaven, would not allow the result to 
remain long doubtful. The fulfilment of 
these views required a certain supremacy 
of the higher powers over states of the 
second and third rank, exercised collective- 
ly, and according to deliberative forms ; but 
not, however, in such a way as to increase 
the strength of the more powerful, or to 
endanger the independence of the more 



THE REVOLUTION. 23 

feeble." This surrogate of an executive 
power, vested in the hands of the powers 
of the first rank, was, in the sequel, wholly 
dissolved at theCongressof Aix-la-Chapelle, 
and a pure state of negation in the reci- 
procal relations of the different govern- 
ments, was all that remained as the found- 
ation of the European union. Instead of 
concerning themselves with measuring the 
strength of the powers to be placed in op- 
position to each other, as in the old system 
of balance, all idea of counterpoise was now 
given up, or at least allowed to remain 
dormant ; every thing like interchange of 
friendly and hostile relations was purposely 
overlooked ; no one state was, by its pre- 
tensions or interference, to disturb another 
in its proceedings, and thus, by mutual 
abstinence, the cheerful calm of a long 
peace was to be introduced into the con- 
flicting elements. 

As, however, it was felt, that some 
positive principle ought to serve as the 
foundation and security of so absolute a 
negation, the Holy Alliance was entered into. 
The principles on which this alliance was 
concluded, were, indeed, such as we must 

c 4 



24 GERMANY AND 

presuppose all christian princes to be go- 
verned by, independently of any compact ; 
but their renewal, and the repeated sanc- 
tion thereby given to them, was, at all 
events, commendable enough. Had this 
alliance gone hand in hand with the restor- 
ation of the Empire before the Congress, 
and the proceedings of the Congress been 
governed by its principles ; had it there, by 
the first proof of its beneficial influence, 
gained the confidence of the minds of men, 
which were then so susceptible of every 
favourable impression, it might certainly 
have formed a grand epoch in history, and 
have introduced a new aera. But coming, 
as it did, as a sort of expiation and atone- 
ment for acts, certainly not very christian, 
in the irritation which succeeded these acts, 
it could only give rise to suspicion ; and 
no permanent consolation in the state of de- 
pression produced by disappointed hopes, 
could possibly be derived from it. This Holy 
Alliance, which occupied the place of the 
antient Holy Roman Empire, might indeed 
serve as a guarantee for the mutual religious 
toleration of the different sects compre- 
hended within it ; but the very religious 



THE REVOLUTION. 25 

indifference which rendered this religious 
guarantee superfluous, deprived the neces- 
sary guarantee of the toleration of all poli- 
tical contrarieties in the various members 
of the alliance, of every thing like a firm 
foundation, and of every species of security. 
If public opinion was in this manner, and 
by all these measures, but little tranquillised 
in its apprehensions of a future pregnant 
with calamity, on the other hand, it could 
not be denied, that this policy of a vacuum, 
so very convenient for the complete im- 
potence of public life, (as it at once con- 
fidently transfers to futurity all problems, 
which the present times might despair of 
being ever able to solve, and refuses to 
fatigue itself in anticipation with the rela- 
tions of generations to come,) was cer- 
tainly natural to an age which, for a period 
equal to the ordinary life of man, has been 
exhausted with furious wars and convul- 
sions ; and now, more than saturated with 
them, impatiently longs for repose on any 
terms, and will not concern itself with the 
affairs of neighbours, except in cases of the 
most urgent necessity. Applied to Euro- 
pean society, in a period which, according 



26 GERMANY AND 

to a universal law of nature, was inclined 
to separation, with a fervor equal to the 
fury of the former endeavour to destroy 
all distinctions and demarcations, and in 
which, from the progress of events, the 
belief in the power and the great influence 
of human wisdom in the direction of human 
affairs, was sunk to a very low ebb ; if all 
the previous conditions had been fulfilled, 
the foundation of an European Republic, at 
the feet of the unknown God, instead of 
the universal monarchy which was just over- 
thrown, must have appeared not merely 
suitable, but the only course that could 
properly have been taken. But then it 
would have been previously necessary to 
extricate the empire from its anarchy, and 
to restore order to its movements ; the 
central point, with respect to situation, if 
not made the central point of powers, 
ought at least to have been in equilibrium 
with them ; as when the supporting point of 
the balance is itself a balance, the former 
will be secured from oscillation. 

Instead of this, however, the same fun- 
damental principle was also adopted in 
Germany; this little Europe was to be a little 



THE REVOLUTION. 27 

holy union in the midst of the great union, 
not guaranteed by its own power, the neces- 
sary condition of every secure guarantee, 
but merely by foreign protection and the 
collision of interests. As every thing like 
internal consolidation was wholly rejected, 
a course was now opened to all these in- 
terests. Austrian, Russian, Prussian, Danish, 
English, and French interests, were to issue 
from their long peninsulas into this eternally 
agitated inland-sea, which, formless, faith- 
less, and mutable in itself, was destined to 
retain, in a state of separation by gentle 
excitation, what alone possessed a solid 
consistency, and to hold it together, at the 
same time, in a feeble bond of union. As, 
by this institution, the union which public 
opinion sought was wholly annihilated as a 
nonentity, it was placed in a state of irre- 
concileable opposition to the new order of 
things ; and as the object of this new order 
could only be attained according to the 
course on which it had entered, by perfidy, 
subjugation, blood, and war, the constitution 
was nothing but a suspension of the right of 
the strongest, a truce proclaimed by the altar 
lor an indefinite period, at the expiration of 



2§ GERMANY AND 

which the jaws of the more powerful might 
again open to swallow up the less power- 
ful, and avarice might again go about like 
a roaring lion, seeking whom it should 
devour. 

The necessary consequences of these ar- 
rangements can only be, that the whole 
country must be worn out with perpetual 
preparation in peace, without ever being 
able to make an effort in actual war ; and 
€very part must bear the same excessive 
burdens as if it was a whole, without obtain- 
ing any thing by the most patient perse- 
verance, but an aggravation of the general 
misery. As no internal cement holds the 
different parts together to avoid the external 
disuniting powers, they must necessarily at- 
tach themselves to the nearest soliciting 
interests ; every war will, of necessity, be a 
civil war; the land will be harassed equally 
by friends and enemies; and, at a peace, 
generosity will always be practised at its ex- 
pense, and the same condition of things, so 
convenient to all, will be carefully restored. 

In the mean time, the following panacea 
received the approbation of the Congress ; 
after various plans had been discussed. 



THE REVOLUTION. 29 

each more silly than another, the Federal 
art was at last adopted in all its pale 
and complexionless universality, creating 
what history had never before witnessed, 
a council in which not the majority of 
votes, but the most perfect unanimity 
should decide. A pure Democracy, of 
which the Demos was composed of courts 
of the most various sentiments, interests, 
and degrees of strength ; a central force 
which does not command, but is com- 
manded by the separate parts ; an executive 
power wholly destitute of power, and 
which, as it cannot act against the refrac- 
tory, is not in a condition to execute any 
one thing whatever, as it never can obtain 
the deficient vote requisite to admit of 
execution ; a legislative power which will 
never investigate its own competency, and 
a judicial power which no one is bound to 
obey, where all acts of authority are con- 
stantly sought in an eternal diplomatic 
agency, and never found : such a constitu- 
tion, had it succeeded, would have been to 
the nations a striking proof of the utter 
inutility of all government, and none but 
Germans, irj whom it is impossible ever 



30 GERMANY AND 

utterly to extinguish the faculty of hoping, 
would have ever dreamt that any thing 
beneficial could possibly result from it. 

But the daughter could not belie the 
mother who bore her ; the theory of reci- 
procal apathy and inactivity, applied to the 
complicated relations of Germany, where 
circumstances imperiously demand a posi- 
tive efficacy, a spirited interference, and a 
well-concerted and intelligent activity, could 
not fail to produce the most ruinous results. 
Those principles which prevailed in the first 
formation of the work, necessarily propa- 
gated themselves throughout its progress ; 
and as it was a received maxim with the 
powers at the Congress, not to consent to the 
smallest sacrifice for the constituting of Ger- 
many, nor to exact any such sacrifice from 
others who should be unwilling to make it, 
the courts included in the federal union 
could find out no ground for their adopting 
another rule of behaviour, and therefore it 
necessarily happened, that the federation, 
according to an apposite expression, fell 
into as many factions as it had members, 
who were only unanimous in one thing, 
namely, their legitimate right of disunion. 



THE REVOLUTION. 31 

Notwithstanding the plausible inaugural 
dissertation at the opening of the Diet, not- 
withstanding the number of apposite quot- 
ations from Schiller and Montesquieu which 
resounded from time to time from the 
table of the assembly, notwithstanding the 
strained and vigorous movements which, to 
appearance, were going on internally, but 
which, however, like a false labour never 
produced any result as a birth, opinion 
could entertain but very faint hopes from 
a work of so feeble and diseased a com- 
plexion ; and the despondency encreased 
from day to day, at the aspect of the inces- 
sant but fruitless struggle of this shapeless 
machine to give itself something like form 
and shape. 

At length time brought on the decisive 
period when a combination of circum- 
stances, which may hardly occur again in an 
age, produced a scarcity of the primary 
articles of subsistence, and the governments 
of the various divisions of the same people, 
with determined selfishness, boldly shut 
out, by their restraints, all love of their 
neighbours ; and thus the contrivances of 
man, concurring with the niggardliness of 



32 GERMANY AND 

nature, produced a half artificial famine. As 
the Diet was then unable to afford any means 
of assistance ; as it could not afterwards 
even agree on a half serious declaration 
that such an evil should not again occur : 
the whole nation saw, with dismay, what it 
had to expect from such an order of things, 
if these impulses of the most cruel selfish- 
ness were to be associated with the dread 
of external force, by which parts of the 
country might be threatened or occupied ; 
if alluring seduction were to corrupt selfish- 
ness, or a crafty diplomacy were to sow 
the seeds of discord, and a great price were 
to be set on treason to the country. From 
this time forward, sentence of condemnation 
was universally pronounced against the fe- 
deral constitution by the nation, and Ger- 
many now also considered itself completely 
deceived in its second great and just 
hope. All that afterwards took place, the 
fruitlessness of every attempt at efficacious 
activity, the refusal to come to a decision 
on the most sacred claims, the termination 
of the most important, the most urgent, 
and the most influential transactions in 
empty forms, endless delays, and petty 



THE REVOLUTION. 33 

machinations of selfishness and obstinacy; 
the proceedings respecting the liberty of 
the press, literary piracy, constitutions, 
definition of competency, the protection of 
the German navigation, the Elsfleth toll, 
the previous transactions in the Rhenish 
Navigation committee (another Diet on a 
smaller scale), and finally, the duties im- 
posed for the revival of German trade, 
which, like the serpents in the statue of 
Laocoon, gradually surround parent and 
children, and coolly destroy them one after 
the other : all these things were felt indeed 
as a deep indignity, but they no longer gave 
rise to any astonishment, as they flowed na- 
turally from the premises which had been 
laid down. 

The nation, deceived in its most just 
expectations, and feeling deeply at heart 
the sting of public insult, was now 
compelled to turn its views towards con- 
stitutions in the several states of the 
federation, and devoted all its strength, 
and, in cases of refusal, all its defiance, to 
the attainment of this last object, from 
which, at a future period, it might yet 
hope to regain, in a more solid and satis- 

D 



34 GERMANY AND 

factory manner, all that it had previously 
lost. The thirteenth article of the federal 
act, coined at first agreeably to a pretty 
fair standard, but afterwards daily cut, 
dipt, and filed down by the arts of dealers 
in political counterfeits, was at length 
thrown in its present state into circulation 
without stamp or impress, and so illegible 
and defaced, that the attemptwas afterwards 
hazarded to construe its inscription into a 
mere right of expectation on the part of the 
people for an indefinite period of time. 

Along with it, the King of Prussia had, 
in the Concessions of the Patent of the 5th 
April, added the substance to the former 
edict of the 5th May, 1814, establishing the 
form of the future representation, and 
thereby fixed the constitution itself in its 
most general features. 

The commencement of a constitutional 
undertaking had already been made in one 
German state, namely, in Wurtemberg. 
In no other place, perhaps, was the mad- 
ness of sovereignty carried to a higher 
pitch, and it was necessary, above all things, 
that the most decided counterpoise should 
there be called forth. When the court 



THE REVOLUTION, 35 

perceived from the Congress the move- 
ments of the new times, it seemed to it an 
easy thing to satisfy their loud claims with 
a little liberal juggling, without deviating a 
single step from the old path of unlimited 
arbitrary rule. The power, which des- 
potism had hitherto exercised under des- 
potic forms, wished to place an illusory 
freedom in these liberal forms, the efiiu- 
ence of its sovereign perfection, as Napoleon 
did on the 18th Brumaire ; and then, in- 
stead of being obliged to retrograde, it would 
have attained the very summit of arbitrary 
power, deridingly commanding, in cabinet 
orders, the existence of what it chose to 
dignify with the name of freedom. Thus 
the first constitution of Wurtemberg was 
commanded, and the assembly of the states 
was summoned. 

But there still lived in that land too 
many men who had at least seen the last 
rays of departing freedom, and in them an 
opposition developed itself quite naturally. 
They made a determined appeal to their 
antient rights, and wholly denied that the 
usurpation, and all that grew out of it, 
could be considered as the foundation 
D 2 



36 GERMANY AND 

of right, entrenched themselves behind the 
old constitution on the firm ground of 
history and record, and from thence loudly 
accused the usurping power of a violation 
of oaths in the face of the world. To such 
a united mass of light, right, power, and 
firmness, it was impossible to make head 
from the position of an ill-consolidated 
power, whose arm was crushed by the 
overthrow of the supreme head from which 
it had been derived ; and after the useless 
struggle had lasted for a time, the court 
saw itself under the necessity of proposing 
the well-known twelve articles, in which a 
sincere freedom at least was commanded. 

The conflict after this was confined en- 
tirely to matter of form, when the person 
of the ruler changed, and the successor, 
who possessed the usurped authority, not 
as an acquisition of his own, but as an in- 
heritance merely, inspired greater con- 
fidence. The twelve articles were embodied 
in a constitution, which was laid before the 
States. But in the heat of the long struggle, 
passions of a personal nature were excited, 
from which the suspicion, that had once 
found an entrance into men's minds, con- 



THE REVOLUTION. 37 

tinned to derive fresh nourishment. The 
States were distrustful of a work, the found- 
ation of which was laid in the favour and 
good-will, in their nature necessarily muta- 
ble, of the ruler, and demanded that it 
should rest on the ground of their antient 
rights, records, and traditions ; that by be- 
ing rooted in this manner, it might have 
the sanction of the whole of the period 
which was past, and thus possess a greater 
degree of legitimacy than the ruling family 
itself. The court, conscious this time of 
its good intentions, was irritated at an op- 
position which, as it was directed against 
so much of what, even by the confession of 
the adverse party themselves, was good and 
beneficial, seemed altogether irrational to 
it. The States, on the other hand, in the 
consciousness of their valid historical right, 
which was necessarily stronger than any 
effervescence of the present time, however 
well-intentioned, were on their part in 
no manner inclined to give way, being 
justly of opinion, that even the favour 
of the moment ought to be declined, 
when purchased at the expense of the 
whole of their past privileges, and that 
d 3 



38 GERMANY AND 

what a people already possessed as their 
native rights, ought to be considered as the 
stem on which every additional security 
should be engrafted. 

In the conflict which now arose, the party 
which stood out for chartered rights was 
joined, as usually happens in similar cases* 
by that bigotted and petty obstinacy which: 
is incapable of discriminating between prin- 
cipal and secondary objects, by that narrow 
and limited range of intellect which cannot 
distinguish what is essential from what is 
merely accessory, by that short-sightedness 
which cannot raise its view beyond its 
accustomed circle, and that spirit of litiga- 
tion and pedantry which would supersti- 
tiously adhere to what is wholly unsubstan- 
tial and useless. On the other hand, the 
advocates of the present times defended 
not merely what is praiseworthy in them, 
but also the abuses peculiar to them ; that 
arrogant trampling on things, situations, 
connections, and relations ; that fantastical 
reduction of every thing specific to general 
abstractions ; and that self-conceit which 
imagines, that with such unsubstantial 
shadows it can command the whole fulness 



THE KEVOLUTION. 39 

of what is peculiar in all things ; and that 
levity, in short, which, from the facility 
with which such airy figures can be created 
and disposed of, would keep every thing 
in a perpetual state of restlessness and 
change, so that no one thing can ever gain 
a secure balance or a firm footing. 

In this warfare of parties, the cause which 
lay between them could not fail to be a 
sufferer ; and things came to a crisis, when 
the king, accustomed as a general to ra- 
pidity of execution, but forgetting the old 
military maxim of building a golden bridge 
for a flying enemy, adopted the resolution 
of fixing a definite period of eight days for 
the acceptance or rejection of the proposed 
constitution, and thus left no choice to the 
assembly of the Estates. The Estates, con- 
vinced that a constitution could only be 
properly established in a constitutional 
manner, by agreement, and that a co?n- 
manded freedom which should, in reality, 
begin with an act of slavery, could afford 
little security for its durability, like an able 
minister who afforded the first example in 
Germany of defending his opinions and 
views in a becoming manner by personal 
d 4 



40 GERMANY AND 

dexterity, but who has neglected to resign 
at the proper moment, rejected for a second 
time the constitution attempted to be im- 
posed on them by a great majority of votes, 
which they were enabled to do, as the 
commons prudently avoided all controver- 
sies with the nobles as to future preten- 
sions, but carried on in concert with them 
the war against the court. 

When the champions of unlimited power 
triumphed at this result, they evinced a 
short-sightedness which was almost with- 
out a parallel. The rejection of two suc- 
cessive constitutions, the one on account of 
its substance, the other principally on ac- 
count of matters of form ; the appeal of a 
court from the Estates to the primary as- 
semblies, and, as the result soon demon- 
strated, the fruitless appeal ; the utmost 
unanimity of sentiment among all who were 
interested in this work : all these were a 
certain indication, that the thread of the 
negotiations which had been snapped, must 
sooner or later be again joined, and con- 
sequently they were by no means signs at 
which tyranny ought to rejoice. They 
proved the degree of security and con- 



THE REVOLUTION. 41 

fidence which the cause of the people had 
already acquired ; they proved what power 
and might there must be in the circum- 
stances of the times, when such advantageous 
offers could be rejected without danger ; 
and they afforded a great and striking 
example in the centre of Germany, at once 
monitory and instructive of the mode in 
which the great litigation between super- 
annuated power and imprescriptable privi- 
leges must be carried on. Here then had 
been demonstrated, on a small scale, what 
history every where teaches us on a great ; 
that whenever affairs are pushed to an 
extreme, an opposition begins always in 
secret to form itself, which grows up at 
first silently, and strengthens itself in con- 
cealment ; and when power or insolence 
conceives itself to be on the point of attain- 
ing its long wished-for aim, it advances like 
an armed force against the astonished ad- 
versary, and drives him from his position 
far beyond the point from which he ori- 
ginally advanced. 

In the centuries in which usurpation, 
pursuing its interests with a blind selfish- 
ness, neglected every other object, the 



42 GERMANY AND 

power, which we usually call public opinion, 
had formed itself from small beginnings, 
and opposed itself to the violence, the 
devouring, and never-to-be-satiated covet- 
ousness, the inanity and moral degradation 
of courts. When the revolution burst into 
European society with the fury of a whirl- 
wind to meet this force, an opposing force 
was soon matured ; and when the Com- 
mons — at first ordered out against their 
demagogical half, then as involuntarily 
united with their despotic half, driven to 
death in all directions, and subservient 
always to the caprice of arbitrary power 
and the vilest interest — had, at length, in 
the general rising, completed as the con- 
scious and animated agents of a higher 
might, what the elements, the blind instru- 
ments of Providence, began : they became 
then fully alive to the feeling of their 
strength, and public opinion had become a 
power, which did not indeed sit at the 
Congress, but which forced from it terms 
of peace, and the concessions of the 13th 
article. This was the first time in which 
it had had a seat and a voice in any regular 
proceedings for the recovery of its old 



THE REVOLUTION. 43 

rights. The specimen was sufficient to 
show the force which it had gained, and it 
now cast a dark and furious look to what 
was going on in the mean time in the 
north of Germany. 

There Prussia, which to the edification of 
Germany, seemed to have acted hitherto on 
the principles of her Anti-Macchiavel *, 
seemed to be now earnestly employed in an 
examination of the Principe of the daring 
Florentine, to cull from it those principles 
which might in some sort be found com- 
patible with a good-natured sincerity. Two 
parties, which are spread over all Germany, 
the advocates of the Old Antediluvian state 
of things, forming the great majority in 
Prussia, and those of the New Napoleon 
state of things, differing less, however, in 
interests and principles from each other 
here than they do elsewhere, as every thing 
has throughout Prussia been rendered sub- 
servient to military government, had united 
towards the end of the war, in order, 



* A Refutation of The Prince of Macchiavel, by 
Frederick II. of Prussia. Trans. 



44 GERMANY AND 

by a re-action, to expel the ideas equ* 
odious to both, which forced their way to 
them, and incommoded them in their 
operations. 

We will not be so unjust as to condemn 
both the elements of this coalition, often 
united in the same person as equally im- 
pure and equally deserving of reprobation. 
Of all the divisions of Germany, Prussia 
alone has, in late times, had a history, 
and given a great man to the age. The 
laurel twined round his brows, was not 
indeed a civic crown ; and the blood of 
kindred people, part of his own nation, 
stained his sword ; but he was not the 
first that had shed such blood, and what 
his bold and powerful arm cut down was 
before-hand rotten and worm-eaten, and 
threatened a speedy downfal. He has 
been reproached, and not unjustly, with 
introducing foreign manners, ideas, senti- 
ments, and maxims of a poisonous nature ; 
but it ought not to be forgotten, that those 
which he found existing were stupid, 
limited, petty, and pedantic to an insup- 
portable degree ; and that, though what he 
introduced may now appear to a more 



THE REVOLUTION. 45 

matured age, in the light of frivolousness, 
it was then countenanced by ingenious 
men, and must, at the time, have ap- 
peared as a very bold and praiseworthy 
emancipation. It is true, no doubt, that 
rendering all relations subordinate to his 
objects, he introduced into all public affairs 
that destructive mechanism, which still, 
like an incurable lameness, holds Prussia 
enthralled in a state of internal torpidity ; 
but it was not his fault if succeeding 
times had not sufficient discernment to 
know what would be beneficial to them, 
and superstitiously honoured the empty 
husks from which his spirit had already 
extracted every thing valuable, and pre- 
served them as the palladium of their 
salvation. 

That affection should offer up her sacri- 
fice to the manes of the departed, was what 
could not be objected to ; and it was just, 
that what was really good and useful in the 
legacy of former times, should not be aban- 
doned with levity merely to please a sense- 
less spirit of innovation ; but then it ought 
not to have been forgotten, that Prussia, by 
the accession of so many elements of the 



46 GERMANY AND 

utmost diversity, was no longer the same ; 
that the times became every day more and 
more unlike what they once where ; and, 
above all, that the most definite and in* 
controvertible rights which could not be 
set aside, and the clearest and most un- 
ambiguous promises had been interposed 
between the state of things which once 
existed, and that which was now called for. 
However, the example of Spain was at 
that time but too seductive for the depo- 
sitaries of power. The old state of things 
had there been re-introduced with so much 
ease along a spacious road, the innovations 
had there been expelled with so much 
facility from the country, the people had 
come back with such apparent willingness 
to their former relations, that a victory, 
gained at so trifling an expense, and at- 
tended with such advantageous results, 
could hardly fail to inspire other govern- 
ments with a feeling of emulation. The 
same attempt, it is true, had already been 
made in France ; but it failed so completely, 
that though the result in form was the same 
as in Spain, it was, in effect, directly the 
reverse, for the attempt terminated with 



THE REVOLUTION, 47 

the complete expulsion of the minority. 
So prone, however, are we to confide in 
our own good fortune, that every one thinks 
it is reserved for himself, by more dextrous 
management, to succeed in an object in 
which others have already failed ; and, in- 
deed, even in France itself, in which the 
experiment had been first tried, the belief in 
the possibility of future success was by no 
means extinguished. After the allied powers 
had carefully collected together and replaced 
all that was dispersed in the explosion, the 
parties reinstated conceived they had merely 
erred, through a weak and excessive spirit of 
yieldingness, and thus the thread which 
had been snapt was again joined, and 
merely spun more coarsely ; till at length, 
as is now the case with us, resistance and 
friction became so strong as to demand the 
whole power of the state, and government, 
with its over-well meaning friends, was re- 
duced to a complete stand. 

It was wished, but could scarcely be 
hoped, that Prussia would spare itself the 
mortification of a similar attempt. For a 
considerable time there had existed a secret 
union called the Union of Virtue ( Tugend- 



48 GERMANY AND 

bund), entered into, as was pretended, for 
the purpose of striving with united powers 
for the attainment of freedom, without 
infringing on the fidelity due to the legi- 
timate princes, and of defending individuals 
and the nation from every species of thral- 
dom, but more especially thraldom to a 
foreign power. This Union was said to 
consist of various degrees distinguished 
from each other by signs, attributes, duties, 
and rights ; all the members were bound 
by the most sacred oaths to the society and 
its objects, and, without knowing any thing 
of the operation of others, were subject only 
to their superior, as the latter again was to 
the grand-master, from which superior they 
received all orders and commissions, and 
having once, after a free deliberation, un- 
dertaken to execute them, they were bound 
to proceed with blind and implicit con- 
fidence, abstaining from all enquiry into 
grounds and motives ; all the secrets of the 
Union were to be kept with the most in- 
violable fidelity, under the pain of death ; 
the members were to be equally inacces- 
sible to the influence of fear and hope, and 
no human force was to have power to 



THE REVOLUTION. 49 

protect the guilty traitor from the venge- 
ance of the society. 

During the period in which the country 
was suffering from the oppression of the 
enemy, such plans may, perhaps, have 
entered into the heads of individuals, and 
the experiment may even have been made 
of attempting to carry them into execution. 
Availing themselves of an old artifice* ... in 
which an insufficiency of means is con- 
cealed, by connecting the measures exhi- 
bited in perspective with a supposed secret 
in the back ground, and thus influencing 
the mind by a belief in the presence of a 
dark and unlimited agency, the more pow- 
erful may then have impressed the more 
weak with a belief in the existence of a 
completely organised society of this de- 
scription, that through the influence of 
fear, and the charm of such an optical 
illusion, they might be able to awaken them 
from their cowardly torpor, and stimulate 
them to energy against the French. Men 
of a weak character were pleased, at that 
time, with the idea of such an invisible as- 
sistance ; the enemy was kept in a state of 
alarm by the stories respecting it, which 



50 GERMANY AND 

continually reached him ; and the govern- 
ment itself seemed far from displeased that 
such a belief should gain ground, and even 
affected to participate in it. But now, when 
it was thought the suitable moment had 
arrived, this union was brought up for the 
purpose of being employed as a weapon 
against the inventors themselves. Suspicion 
seems inseparable from the condition of 
princes, one of those evils which are al- 
lotted to them in the order of things, as a 
sort of compensation to other mortals for 
the many advantages possessed by their 
rulers. " It is a miserable state of mind," 
says Bacon, " to have few things to desire, 
and many things to fear ; and yet that 
commonly is the case of kings, who, being 
at the highest, want matter of desire, which 
makes their minds more languishing ; and 
have many representations of perils and 
shadows, which make their minds the less 
clear. And this is one reason also of that 
effect which the scripture speaketh of, that 
the kings heart is inscrutable. For mul- 
titude of jealousies, and lack of some pre- 
dominant desire, that should marshal and 
put in order all the rest, maketh any man's 



THE REVOLUTION. 51 

heart hard to find or sound." For this rea- 
son, courts will always be a theatre for 
similar machinations. 

Immediately after the second peace of 
Paris, a manuscript report, or memorial of 
twenty-one sheets, with the title of " What 
have we to Fear or to Hope from Secret 
Political Associations in Germany?" was 
presented to the King by a person who 
filled an office of consideration. In this 
work the Tugendbund was exhibited as 
pregnant with the utmost danger. It was 
observed, that many men of the greatest 
consequence in the state were directly or 
indirectly implicated in it ; and though it 
had hardly contributed any thing to the 
salvation of the monarchy, it now threat- 
ened its tranquillity, and even existence, by 
the most alarming intrigues. During the 
war, this union had been the means of 
throwing a number of dangerous ideas into 
circulation ; through concessions of various 
kinds, wrung from the misfortunes and 
necessities of the government, a spirit of 
boldness had in consequence begun to raise 
its head aloft, and notions had found their 
way into the minds of the people to which 

e 2 



52 GERMANY AND 

hitherto they had been strangers. Prussia, 
it was said, being necessarily a military 
state, was, on that account, essentially 
monarchical, and the admixture of liberal 
ideas, as it would disturb the purity of the 
monarchy, must also essentially endanger 
the existence and safety of the State. The 
means for making head against this evil were 
then pointed out. The hopes which were 
entertained, and of which every thing like 
sound policy forbad the fulfilment, ought, 
it was said, to be radically destroyed ; the 
men who had become dangerous from their 
popularity ought to be gradually removed ; 
the statesmen employed in distant diplo- 
matic missions, the generals, dexterously 
laid aside, and the subordinate participators 
at once deprived of all influence. Every 
thing, in short, was conceived in the spirit 
of that crafty and astute policy which finds 
an entrance into the minds of the children 
of the age when God wishes to bring their 
pride and self-conceit to shame. * 



* To give an example of the levity with which people 
of this description proceed on such occasions, and as a 
warning which may not be without its use during the 



THE REVOLUTION. 53 

The King, whose indignation had been 
dexterously excited against certain men 



present rumours of conspiracy, I shall here cite a passage 
from the last page but one of that report, where the 
author undertakes to answer the question, " Who can 
be received into the King's party ?" The passage is as 
follows : " The members of the Tugendbwid receive all 
persons possessed of talents and influence without regard 
to their moral qualities, Were not this the case, they 
could never have contaminated themselves by the ad- 
mission of a Reisach, a Griiner, and a Gorres. The 
first of these made his escape from Bavaria as a criminal; 
the second violated his word of honour in 1812, and 
placed the state to which he was pledged in the greatest 
danger, married the mistress of a Frenchman, &c. &c. 
Gorres was a French agent down to 1813, and in those 
days wrote in the spirit of the Jacobins, as he now writes 
in the spirit of the members of this society." Mr. v. B. 
has been named to me as the person who, from his senti- 
ments, views, and his former situation, was, in all pro- 
bability, the author of this report. I shall write his 
name at full length when I have obtained certainty as to 
this point ; at present I shall merely content myself with 
proclaiming the author, whoever he may be, a disho- 
nourable and worthless liar, not on account of what he 
has said of me, as I conceive my honour is not depend- 
ant on the idle and impertinent scandal of cabinets and 
courtiers, but on an account of an irreproachable lady, 
whose name, for the sake of the affair, I have been ob- 
liged to mention, and to whom the opinions of the people 
of Coblentz, under whose eyes she grew up, will afford 
the best satisfaction for the attacks of her calumniators. 

E 3 



54 GERMANY AND 

and certain opinions, started back with 
affright from the abyss now pointed out to 
him as opened at his feet, and the party 
proclaimed their views, as far as they were 
communicable to the public, in the well- 
known work of Schmalz. The manner in 
which this work was received in Prussia, 
and indeed throughout all Germany, might 
have taught the party, on their very first 
attempt, the hour which had now struck ; 
a general and undivided irritation had the 
effect of bringing public opinion imme- 
diately under arms; never was the supe- 
riority of truth, energy and talent, over 
malicious and cowardly wickedness, more 
decidedly evinced ; never was there a more 
complete and humiliating defeat ; and the 
party, beaten in every one of their attempts, 
confounded at the unexpected resistance, 
and not being withal blessed with an ex- 
cess of courage, in the impossibility of 
allaying the movement which they had so 
incautiously and so wantonly called forth, 
in any other manner than by an act of 
power, fled for refuge behind the throne, 
and the King commanded that the affair 
should no more be talked of: a step as 



THE REVOLUTION. - 55 

unworthy of Majesty, which ought never to 
connect itself with party, as it was insult- 
ing to the nation, to which the right of 
expressing its sentiments with freedom on 
public affairs can in no case be refused, but 
least of all in cases of public accusation. 

The impression which these offensive 
proceedings produced on the minds of the 
whole nation could not easily be mistaken. 
The grave accusation, as justice demanded, 
was gravely received, and when the charge 
of treason, to the disgrace of its originators, 
ended in vapour and smoke, and the whole 
tissue was quickly seen through in all its 
coarseness, the nation could perceive no- 
thing but the most insolent ingratitude in 
every quarter, and, in this unsuccessful 
attempt, the introduction only to a return 
of the old and odious abuses. From this 
unlucky moment suspicion took the alarm, 
and began with an inquisitive eye to watch 
the conduct of the government, for the 
purpose of obtaining a full and complete 
certainty. 

The proceedings which immediately fol- 
lowed, soon, alas, proved, that the party 
was indeed silent, but had not the more on 

e 4 



56 GERMANY AND 

that account renounced their plots and in- 
trigues. On the contrary, all that was re- 
commended in the memorial, seemed to be 
advancing step by step towards a complete 
execution. A general, high in the public 
estimation (Gneisenau), was removed from 
his command, and the whole pack of those 
hounds which, since the time of Napoleon 
had been starving at their chains, were let 
loose at him in the journals, and particu- 
larly in the Allgemeine Zeitimg. In their 
howling? nothing was to be heard but 
Wallenstein, and the Seni and Piccolo- 
mini % w T hom they had also discovered ; 
and nothing was wanting but the halberd f 
to complete the infamous spectacle which 
they exhibited before the eyes of in- 
dignant Germany. At the same time, 
the prelude to the shameful deductions 
which have since become but too familiar 
to the public, began to be acted in these 
journals, namely, that the King was not 



* Characters in a well-known Tragedy of Schiller. 

Trans. 
t Alluding to the manner of Wallenstein's death. 

Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 57 

bound to keep his promise, and therefore 
might either give no constitution, or one 
altogether illusory, as he pleased. These 
articles, which, assuming an official air, have 
now been continued for nearly four years, 
and are of an insulting, dishonourable, hol- 
low, and worthless character, have contri- 
buted, more than seems to be supposed, to 
embitter and inflame the minds of men ; 
but the government, as it would appear, 
could never discover their treasonable tur- 
pitude, or at least has never till this hour 
made the least allusion to them, even in the 
State Gazette. 

As the organisation of the Rhenish pro- 
vinces, which were pourtrayed in these 
accounts as the focus of revolutionary in- 
trigues excited by ambitious Proconsuls, 
happened to take place at this time, it 
seemed a matter of the greatest importance 
to apply the principles in question imme- 
diately to them, and to extinguish these 
dangerous flames with the least possible 
delay. The work was completed in the 
haughty and insolent manner for which 
so marked a preference was now shown. 
All the rights and privileges of the natives 



58 GERMANY AND 

were trodden under foot ; all sorts of in- 
terests were injured ; the most sophistical 
expositions were resorted to, in order to 
avoid the performance of promises ; even 
the proposals of the commissioners them- 
selves were not adhered to ; and every 
thing was arranged off hand according to 
the w T ill and pleasure of two ministries 
wholly unacquainted with the relations of 
these provinces. Irritated by previous pro- 
ceedings, disquieted by the general distrust 
so recently allayed which had again taken 
root, these provinces were prepared for this 
treatment from the government ; and as 
the government now acted precisely as it 
had done in Poland, it seemed to them 
that Old Prussia was come again, and they 
conceived themselves on that account well 
warranted in resuming the old hatred. 
When the first violation of solemn pro- 
mises followed, every thing else was ex- 
pected as a matter of course. Confidence 
was lost, public opinion, which had hitherto 
remained off its guard, now stept forward 
armed at all points for resistance, and since 
that moment a spirit of opposition and 
defiance has existed which no subsequent 



THE REVOLUTION* 59 

conciliation will be able to allay. The 
government forgot, at the most unfortunate 
of all conjunctures, the advice of the Roman 
Consuls in the affair of the Aricini and 
Ardeates, whose territories the Romans 
wished to seize ; famce quidem acjidei damna 
major a esse quam quce cesti?nari possent. 

In the rest of the north of Germany, 
the situation of things was not such as to 
promise results and prospects of a much 
more consolatory nature. In the Cimbrian 
Peninsula, in Holstein and Lauenburg, a 
commission, chosen from the prelates, 
knights, towns, and jurisdictions, met in 
1816, to deliberate on the plan of a. con- 
stitution communicated by the court ; and 
the deliberation, notwithstanding the most 
praiseworthy spirit of accommodation dis- 
played by the higher orders, has not up to 
this hour been conducted to the expected 
termination. The court refused to comply 
with the just demand to extend the new 
constitution to Schleswig, and at the same 
time stated, that it was not disposed to 
do one whit more than the stipulations of 
treaties demanded ; and as it would only 



60 GERMANY AND 

concede a deliberative vote to the estates, 
it evinced that it had also arbitrarily inter- 
preted those treaties in the manner most 
favourable to uncontrolled power. 

In the two halves of the country of 
Mecklenburg, where fortune has been so 
unequal in her distributions, where an order 
of things developed in former centuries has 
continued almost untouched to this day, 
where a powerful nobility have divided the 
country into plantations among one an- 
other, on which the peasant serves as a 
slave, and where the free middle class has 
not yet obtained sufficient power to enforce 
the claims to which the times entitle it ; 
from the nature of things the impression of 
the age could not be very perceptible. 
Hence, when the oaths to the government 
were taken, the old state of things, with 
respect to laws and rights, was there con- 
firmed merely by a grasp of the hand ; and 
an organic political-law of the two ruling 
houses regulated the manner in which the 
disputes of the Estates with the govern- 
ment were to be settled, now that there was 
no longer any judicial supremacy in conse- 



THE REVOLUTION. 61 

quence of the dissolution of the empire. * 
The only opposition which was made to 
this new arrangement of affairs, as it rested 
on no historical foundation, but merely on 
the basis of general 'ideas, could hardly fail 
to end in airy nothing, as all attempts at 
universal equalisation usually do ; and the 
proposition of one of the members of 
the state, to transform at once all those 
who enjoyed the protection of the state 
into members of the state, who should 
exercise their rights either in an immediate 
assembly of the people or by delegation, 
and, more particularly, to abolish the two 
institutions, which, connected as they are 
with each other, must stand or fall toge- 
ther ; that of an hereditary nobility which 
rises to an undue height above the middle 



* By the constitutions of the Empire, an appeal lay 
to the highest imperial tribunals from the superior tri- 
bunals of the several states, except such as had an un- 
limited privilegium de non appellando. Mecklenburg, by 
Art. XV. of the peace of Teschen, was promised this 
privilege ; but it could not be granted, as the two Dukes 
and their subjects could not come to an agreement re- 
specting the courts which should supply the place of the 
imperial tribunals. Trans, 



62 GERMANY AND 

class, and that of a predial slavery which 
sinks as far below it, was not altogether 
unjustly, though rather in language some- 
what two high flown, rejected as a piece of 
arrogance and presumption. 

In the kingdom of Saxony, the old con- 
stitution of the Estates had been again intro- 
duced ; that rotten, complicated, cumbrous, 
patchwork of the last centuries, which, 
without plan and comprehension, without 
either greatness of conception, or even 
practical fitness, destitute for the most part 
of every thing like an instinctive and plastic 
tendency to improvement, and merely cal- 
culated to provide for the next emergency, 
had been incessantly placing rag over rag, 
and heaping mass on mass. Such a mode 
of representation was only too much cal- 
culated to give a government the power 
of excluding every thing like progressive 
improvement, under the pretence of ex- 
ercising a necessary circumspection. The 
representation of the yeomanry, such an 
improvement of the constitutions of towns 
as should render their deputies their 
real representatives, an admission of the 
possessors of estates incapable of sitting in 

12 



THE REVOLUTION. 63 

the Diet, were all out of the question; and 
even the assembling of the smaller and 
larger committee of the equestrian order 
was refused. The government would only 
admit the estates to the right of a deli- 
berative vote, and denied their competency 
to submit any effective propositions, or 
even to vote on the measures submitted to 
them. The diminution of the standing 
army, solicited by the Estates, was rejected 
as impracticable ; the production of all in- 
formation respecting the different branches 
of the public expenditure and income was 
refused, because it was said, the king, dur- 
ing his fifty years' government, had never 
demanded more than the necessities of the 
state required ; but the donations granted 
by them were thankfully received. 

In Hanover, in like manner, the new and 
unruly spirit of the times had not yet been 
in action a sufficient length of time to break 
up, along with the old manners, the tracks 
and paths of the mighty aristocracy of that 
country, and they soon succeeded in taking- 
possession of the whole circle of powers 
which they formerly filled. The return of 
the aristocracy to authority and influence 



64 GERMANY AND 

was accompanied by the return of the old 
government, which possessed a kindred 
spirit. This government was regular, equit- 
able, and well-intentioned, but at the same 
time heavy, helpless, and punctilious to 
excess. It could not so much be said to 
resist the claims of the age, as (what is 
still a great deal worse) to be wholly ig- 
norant of them, like its own university, 
which, with a high air of beggarly pride, 
affects an ignorance of the new spirit that 
has shed its refreshing influence on science, 
as if what we have not taken any notice 
of were wholly extinguished and renounced 
by the world. An assembly of estates 
which withdrew itself from publicity, in 
which the various elements were bound 
together in a species of satiety, and a vis 
inertice alone prevailed, was little calculated 
to convert an essentially oscillatory into a 
progressive movement, and to infuse spirit 
into the stagnant life of this people, who, 
accustomed in so many things to a slavish 
imitation of the ruling islanders, cannot, 
however, adopt their activity. Yet, impelled 
by that spirit to which no one, however 
refractory, can ever be wholly insensible,- 



THE REVOLUTION. 65 

many a salutary and praiseworthy object 
was promoted ; an economical adminis- 
tration of the ecclesiastical possessions still 
remaining, and a conscientious application 
of them to the wants of the church and the 
advancement of education ; the abolition 
of exemptions from taxation, a measure no 
doubt tending solely to benefit the public 
treasury, as the rate of taxation was not 
thereby in any degree lowered ; an equa- 
lisation as far as possible of the various 
parts of the country with respect to land- 
tax ; the allowing a diet for the seven 
lordships of East Fries] and, and the re- 
storation of the magistrates in the principal 
towns of that province ; the abolition of the 
torture and the oath of purification ; the 
deliberating on a proposition for the intro- 
duction of juries ; — all these proceedings, 
though defective wherever practical dex- 
terity and ability were requisite for their 
execution, and wherever extent of view 
and clearness of conception were necessary 
in their plan, are still entitled to thanks as 
a praiseworthy commencement. 

In Hesse, to the advantages to be de- 
rived from a return to the old state of 
things, were, at an early period, associated 

F 



66 GERMANY AND 

the disadvantages which follow in the train 
of an unfortunate predilection for the an- 
tiquated ; disadvantages which were still 
farther augmented by an excessive passion 
for heaping up money. Hence, with the old 
appearance of the army, now become ludi- 
crous, the old and odious starvation system 
had also returned. Hence, too, all the nego- 
tiations entered into with the Estates became 
abortive whenever an attempt was made to 
separate the property of the State from the 
private property of the Prince. The dis- 
pute which now arose revived all the 
odious recollections of former times in the 
minds of the people. A constitution was 
then offered for sale for a certain sum <of 
money ; and when the purchase did not 
take place, nothing more was heard of the 
fulfilment of the 13th article. This sort 
of chaffering was not indeed unheard of in 
former times ; but it by no means belonged 
to that part of the practices of former times 
which ought to have been revived. Hence 
the disputes with the purchasers of domains 
were more dexterously adjusted in Bruns- 
wick and Hanover than here, where, with 
the most obstinate harshness? justice and 



THE REVOLUTION. 67 

injustice were confounded together, and 
new laws were issued by the ruler to his 
own courts for their guidance in particular 
cases where he himself was a party. This 
disgraceful proceeding, the subject of uni- 
versal reprobation, placed the impotence of 
the Germanic constitution in the most 
unequivocal light ; and the effects of the 
indignation, to which it gave rise, will with 
difficulty be removed by a general law of 
the diet applicable to similar cases in time 
to come. Hence, too, all the crying abuses 
in the judicial and other departments re- 
mained untouched. Hesse continued quite 
stationary, separated, as it were, from the 
community of the nation, and seemed, by 
its conduct, to justify the reproach to which 
it was deemed more obnoxious than any 
other state, of taking little or no interest in 
public affairs. 

This course which affairs had taken in 
the North of Germany, was ill calculated to 
tranquillise public opinion, which longs for 
vigorous and popular institutions, for the 
security of the present and future times, 
and an active and animating public spirit 
diffused throughout the whole nation. Re- 

f 2 



68 GERMANY AND 

pose, and a quiet apartment, are, no doubt, 
more especially necessary for the present 
times, which have been almost exhausted 
with unceasing restlessness ; but the repose 
which they need is not the repose of indo- 
lence, but that firm and sustained equa- 
bility which does not wear itself out with 
pure bustle, but proceeds with steadiness 
and certainty to the accomplishment of its 
objects with the least expense of exertion. 
Germany can never be benefited by a 
return to that lazy, lame, and stupid state 
of things that prevailed anterior to the 
movements of latter times, where public 
life, without hill and dale, resembled a flat 
and dreary heath, on which pen-folds were 
erected for the various civil communities. 

Such fearful storms have not passed over 
Europe, that while the thunder-clouds are 
still rolling in the distant horizon, we 
should again collect and put together the 
fragments of the kingdom of mediocrity 
shattered by the storm, in which all energy 
was a dissonance, all talent a dangerous 
power, every idea was considered a plague, 
and every thing like elevation of purpose 
and enthusiasm was treated as perilous in- 



THE REVOLUTION. 69 

sanity. That ossification which held all the 
noble and vital parts in a state of torpid 
inactivity, will not again be considered by 
us as health ; nor the obliteration of every 
vestige of an idea of representation, and 
constitutional laws, be any more considered 
as an advancement in the career of huma- 
nity, and a way of thinking befitting a citizen 
of the world. 

The common-place routine, unacquainted 
with every thing like extension of view, and 
which cannot even form a conception of 
what is great or elevated ; which, without 
dignity in action, gives itself up to all that 
is confined and petty, and which, from an 
inability of seeing in any thing the relation 
between cause and effect, is perplexed by 
the most usual occurrences, and hurried on 
to acts of precipitancy, will no longer do 
for us. The work of the times cannot be 
furthered by that stiff and unwieldy pedan- 
try, which, in every thing, would observe the 
most rigid method, and therefore on every 
unforeseen occurrence, and on all important 
concerns where rules treacherously leave 
their slaves in the lurch, is totally without 
presence of mindand without resources. That 

f 3 



70 GERMANY AND , 

spirit which has descended to wrestle with 
us, if we still continue to conduct ourselves 
in the struggle like so many lame invalids, 
instead of strengthening us for the coming 
time, will throw us down with shame and 
disgrace, and then, laughing us to scorn, 
leave us to our fate. 

The persons of whom history is now 
in want, are not smooth, superficial, and 
worn-out courtiers who pursue unmean- 
ing insignificancy as a study, and inanity 
as a trade ; nor ministers who can only 
seat themselves at the end of a long row 
of clerks, and then display a mastery of 
the letters of the alphabet, but who know 
nothing of the world or life ; nor generals 
who hold the scabbard higher than the 
sword, and who esteem the appearing to 
advantage in a court drawing-room as the 
highest blessing on earth ; nor men in 
office, and soldiers, whose whole vigour 
evaporates in empty show. Efficient, active, 
and experienced men are wanted, in whom 
there is spirit and life, who are ready to 
pay the claims of the times with their per- 
sons, and who esteem forms according to 
their worth, but disdain to be slaves to 



THE REVOLUTION. 71 

them ; men who can courageously bestride 
the rapid courser, and govern its wild 
impetuosity. 

It is, no doubt, one of the problems of 
the times to restore tranquillity and comfort 
to the mass, as the secure foundation of the 
future public life ; but the lukewarm indif- 
ference, the unsympathising carelessness, 
the superficial triviality of sentiment, the 
miserable insipidity of a former period must 
not again return on us ; and least of all will 
we consent to take for our model the cob- 
bling and bolstering-up system of the times 
that preceded the last, which crawled on 
without ideas and elevation of purpose, and, 
without vigour or dignity, guided only at 
best by a sort of obtuse notion of justice. 
That cabinet-despotism which had its origin 
in Italy, but was practised in France to a 
greater extent than in any other country, 
and which was transplanted from thence to 
Germany in the period in question, can by 
no means supply, with us, the place of a 
regulated will, free because it yields obe- 
dience to the law, and strong because it 
keeps within its just boundaries. The 
financial delusions which have been the 

f 4 



72 GERMANY AND 

ruin of Europe, will never be improved and 
transformed into liberal institutions by re- 
mission ; it is onlj by additional exaction 
that the balance can be restored. Neither 
is avarice, though it usually clings to age, 
on that account a venerable idea and a 
dignified principle of government. More- 
over, an order of things in which duties and 
rights are not apportioned to individuals 
with an equal measure in the same institu- 
tions, and do not reciprocally modify each 
other in their rising and falling, but would 
rather seem to be divided and to be allot- 
ted separately to different bearers, will no 
longer be able to maintain itself; nor can 
an obsolete personal servitude any further 
be suffered to exist, when free and intelli- 
gent consent comes voluntarily forward to 
relieve it from its burden. The age did 
not long for the return of the old, merely 
that it should be forced on it in all its cor- 
ruption, when advantageous to arbitrary 
power and sinister interests, as was, for the 
most part, the case in the North; but that it 
should be withheld from it where it would 
be able to restrain both, as was the case in 
Wurtemberg, for instance. The charm of 



THE REVOLUTION. 73 

the wicked spell which came from abroad, 
and held all the power of Germany fast 
bound, has now lost its virtue ; and that 
country is determined to have no longer 
any part in the blessing of Issachar the 
son of Jacob, and to be as an ass under 
burdens. 

If the state of the North led the nation 
to considerations like these, the condition 
of the South could not fail to awake other 
considerations of an opposite description. 
This portion of the empire had, for a con- 
siderable length of time, formed a part of 
France; the Rhenish provinces having been 
united with it even in the earlier demo- 
cratic times of the Revolution, and the 
States on the right bank having been re- 
duced to a condition of vassalship to it by 
the confederation of the Rhine at a more 
recent period, and forced to take part in all 
its wars and operations. While, therefore, 
in the Rhenish provinces united with 
France, democratic ideas had very exten- 
sively diffused themselves amongst the 
third estate, and whilst a spirit of free in- 
dependence had sprung up in that quarter, 
in the States of the Confederation, the courts 



74 GERMANY AND 

alone were active, and transplanted the 
Revolution, in the form which it then pos- 
sessed, into Germany. 

This Revolution was a great judgment of 
God, held in that land in order to punish 
first it, and then the rest of the world, for 
the shame and transgressions of many 
years, and at last to extinguish the blood- 
guiltiness * which, augmented by interest 
and the accessions of ages, advanced with a 
fearful growth from generation to gener- 
ation ; in the same manner as Providence 
called forth the Reformation to sit in judg- 
ment on and to punish the fall of ancient 
discipline within and without the church, 
the torpor which had seized the higher 
spiritual life, the universal hypocrisy, self- 
ishness, and callousness, and the obstinate 



* Blut-schuld in the original. This word occurs fre- 
quently in Luther's, translation of the Bible. In the 
corresponding passages of our translation, the word 
blood-guiltiness is used as " Deliver me from blood- 
guiltiness, O God." (Psalm li. 14.) Adelung defines 
Blut-schuld the crime of shedding innocent blood, which 
seems the meaning in the above passage of the Psalms ; 
but the definition of Frisch, — Scelus, quod sanguinis 
effusione puniendum, is evidently the sense in which it is 
used in the text TVans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 75 

stupidity with which empty formulae were 
adhered to after their life was fled. 

The courts of the North, in those days, 
were at first impelled by the popular move- 
ment, but afterwards taking a part in it* 
they contrived to master it ; and when the 
devil, on being driven from affirmation, 
laughing the world to scorn, took refuge in 
negation, what began with the purification 
of the church, ended with its shameful spo- 
liation throughout the whole of protestant 
Europe, and the grand idea of ecclesiastical 
dominion, internally hollowed by selfish 
ambition, and dissolved in luxurious lazi- 
ness, was, in this insurrection, destroyed 
by the same degree of selfishness in the 
re-action ; and thus the triple crown of the 
Pope was either divided among the Princes 
as spiritual sovereigns, or seized by the 
spiritual aristocracy, or even shared by the 
various congregations themselves. The 
very same thing happened now. The courts 
of the West, with the Revolution in their 
rear, having entered into an alliance with 
the most unlimited despotism, the plunder 
of the other half of the church which had 
yet escaped the Reformation, the oppression 



76 GERMANY AND 

and devouring of all the weaker members 
of the empire, the abolition and destruc- 
tion of all the old rights, customs, and re- 
collections of the people, and the complete 
annihilation of the German empire, the 
other idea of the middle ages, were the 
necessary consequences of this alliance. 

In the presumption and emergencies of 
such a period, a class of statesmen had 
been formed of a description quite different 
from the majority of those in the North, who 
consisted either of the remains of the age 
which preceded the great convulsion, or of 
men who have since been educated in their 
principles. The statesmen of the latter 
description are the slaves of custom, ac- 
knowledge only what already exists, and 
entertain the deepest aversion for every inno- 
vation ; the former, again, neither acknow- 
ledge nor esteem any thing present or past, 
and hate all that is positive as an obstacle 
in the way of their restless activity. Whilst 
the one set of men dare not venture even 
to touch any thing that has been handed 
down to them, and dragging after them the 
dead body of what perished from age till 
it is overtaken by corruption, plod on, like 



THE REVOLUTION. 77 

slaves on the estate to which they were 
attached, in a bolder and more enterprising 
period; the others consider every thing 
that has been as lapsed and forfeited to 
death, and themselves as lords of the pre- 
sent and tyrants of the future. Children of 
the day which brought them forth, denying 
the authority of all that formerly was, they 
still entertain the hope that their commands 
will be listened to by a coming age, to 
which they in turn will have been a past, 
and which to morrow may annihilate their 
labours with as much justice as they anni- 
hilated the labours of yesterday. Exer- 
cising the most unlimited controul over 
every thing existing, by which the other 
class are controlled, in their restless acti- 
vity, they mix and confound all things 
together. With the rapidity with which 
one thought succeeds another in the human 
breast, they endeavour to remodel their 
world. In the pruriency of their lust of 
change, they convert first one peculiarity 
and then another into some mis-shapen 
figure, which, when the whim seizes them, 
they again, without hesitation, dash into a 
thousand pieces to make way for another 



78 GERMANY AND 

creation of their desires. Restless, as if 
possessed by the evil spirit, they drive and 
hunt men and things up and down, and 
through and through each other, so that 
no one thing can have time to take root. 
As they have not even a conception of the 
still, quiet, and easy way in which nature 
unfolds her works, their impatience has 
recourse to mechanism, and the state be- 
comes in their hands a great steam-engine, 
in which they themselves ascend and 
descend as a hot vapour, impelling, with 
deafening noise, an immense lever, at once 
serving to put in motion works for the 
coining of money, for raising of water, for 
hammering, spinning, and writing, and, at 
last, producing another machine like itself. 
In this mechanism, in which every thing 
becomes lines and numbers, all the lines 
must terminate in one central point, and 
all the numbers must form one unit, that 
arbitrary power may, from the centre, cal- 
culate and control the different move- 
ments at pleasure, and no human or muni- 
cipal relations may presume to assert an 
opposing and destructive independence. 
Every thing is violently sacrificed to the 



THE REVOLUTION. 79 

idea which happens to have the ascendancy 
for the time. Nothing has so firm a 
foundation that the whirlwind of their rage 
for organization cannot at last blow it 
down. Every thing great which has struck 
a deep root in time, and which, tranquil 
and secure within itself, does not give way 
at the precise moment they wish it to do 
so, appears punishable and rebellious in 
their eyes ; and they avail themseves of all 
the elements to blow up and destroy it, 
that nothing may remain but the gigantic 
work which has been painted in perspective 
by them. As neither truth, love, custom, 
habit, piety, nor aught that agitates the 
human breast, is necessary for their work, — 
as an understanding, clear and transparent 
as water arranges and disposes every thing, 
they can proceed unrelentingly in their 
course through all human relations, and 
pawns, bishops, rooks, and knights, are 
moved at pleasure from one end of their 
chess-board to another. Their constitu- 
tions are not social unions entered into by 
independent men for mutual protection 
and liberation ; they are books, of which 
the leaves, formed of substances once pos- 



80 GERMANY AND 

sessed of vegetable life, afterwards worn to 
rags, next decomposed, and finally recast 
in the shape of paper, have been written 
over with their ordinary thoughts, and 
then numbered and bound up with gilt 
edges, and when the edition is disposed of 
make their re-appearance in a new edition. 
Hence all their labours are without a bless- 
ing, as they build only on self-conceit. 
Every succeeding day destroys what the 
preceding day brought forth. Like Saturn 
they are perpetually obliged to devour their 
own children, till, at length, the enraged 
mother presents them with the stone, and 
rears the avenger. Being, generally speak- 
ing, men of energy, determination, intellect, 
and talents, they might have been the salt 
of their country ; but, slaves to pride, they 
have been to it as a devouring poison ; 
and thus these wild and ardent minds, 
having obtained the mastery over one-half 
of Germany, and the other lazy and creep- 
ing beings having obtained the mastery 
over the other half, our country has been 
reduced to the pitiful condition in which we 
now behold it. On the one side it appears 
as if struck by a palsy, on the other as if 



THE REVOLUTION. 81 

seized by St. Vitus's dance ; and while the 
one half, labouring under an asthenia, 
broods over dull and empty dreams, the 
other, in a state of hyperstJienia, wears itself 
out in fantastic and extravagant delirations. 
The proceedings in the times of the con- 
federacy of the Rhine, which took place in 
the States of that confederation, are yet 
fresh in our memories, and it would be 
both useless and invidious to revive such 
disagreeable recollections. When the em- 
pire of Napoleon was overthrown, and 
public opinion expressed itself vehemently 
against these courts, a re-action w^hich 
developed itself from the conflict of the 
utmost diversity of motives was then 
formed in them. The pleasant habits of 
arbitrary power, previously indulged in, 
were not easily reconcileable with the new 
claims of the age ; while the good-will, so 
characteristic of Germans, though keenly 
alive to the sting of the conscience, strug- 
gled with the wounded pride that endea- 
voured to retain its importance against the 
new order of things then bursting in, and 
angrily resented the importunity with which 
old offences were brought forward. On these 



82 GERMANY AND 

occasions too little allowance was perhaps 
made for the power of the circumstances 
in which these offences originated. 

In this emergency, those statesmen of 
the second class who had formerly had the 
guidance of the change effected according 
to the principles of Napoleon, now pro- 
posed a convenient mode of solving the 
difficulty. Like their master, after his 
return, they threw themselves on the li- 
beral side, but took special care to make 
all those reservations which they deemed 
necessary to their views. By yielding to the 
times a few concessions which it was hardly 
possible to refuse, enough was done to 
satisfy the good-will above alluded to, and 
to lull the conscience asleep, and the most 
urgent and importunate demands were thus 
got rid of by payment in a depredated coin. 
For the claims afterwards to be given in, 
which, like the French national debt, had 
already been pared down according to law, a 
rich store was collected of those papers and 
phrases which never pass current at their 
nominal value; and a well-furnished shop 
was set up of the gimcracks with which the 
Revolution furnished us, and with which the 



THE REVOLUTION. 83 

spirit of the times playfully sported, like the 
bird with the silver ball ; concessions which 
cost nothing, but which always tell for 
something on the parade ; liberties which 
either mean nothing, or determine to do 
suit and service to arbitrary power for their 
bread ; grants prudently limited by laws of 
exception ; hollow formulae and hypocritical 
and gilded lies, in which vanity delights to 
deck itself, and that may be termed the 
auxiliaries with which the prudence of this 
world endeavours to force its way through 
all its difficulties. When the small wares 
began to find admirers, a hope was enter- 
tained that they might serve to purchase 
back the more early concessions : the result 
was every thing that could be wished for ; 
and arbitrary power, which was now in pos- 
session of that state of preparation which 
the fashion of the time demanded, became 
again a saleable article in the market. 

Thus the Duchy of Nassau, even before 
the meeting of Congress, had obtained a 
constitution, which, in a theoretical point 
of view, was not particularly objectionable, 
but from which little practical advantage has 
ever been derived. Under the pretext tha£ 

g 2 



84 GERMANY AND 

the perpetual changes of territory would 
not admit of the calling together the Estates, 
the constitution remained unexecuted for 
three years, during which interval an ap- 
paratus was contrived for checking and 
keeping down, before they could display 
themselves, all such passions as might by 
possibility be dangerous, and all such 
agitations as might be produced by dema- 
gogues. Hence, on the pretence that the 
Estates ought to be constituted, but by no 
means to be constituent, they were allowed 
to take no part in the formation of the 
institutions, which effected a complete change 
in all their internal relations; and their 
unqualified assent was demanded to the 
most important edicts relating to subjects, 
in which the necessity for consultation was 
increased with the number of parties and 
interests affected by them. 

To meet the alarming power and the 
stormy character of twenty elective repre- 
sentatives of the people, the government 
had endeavoured to strengthen and in- 
trench itself agreeably to the most approved 
rules of fortification. A compact and close 
united army of office-bearers, powerful, dis- 



THE REVOLUTION. 85 

tinguished, wearing uniform, subject, like 
the nobility, to a free* jurisdiction, relieved 
as well as their sons from liability to mili- 
tary service, many of them connected by 
the ties of relationship with the Prince, 
ready to obey every nod of their com- 
mander, and removable individually by a 
stroke of the pen from one end of the 
country to the other, guiding and directing 
from one common centre through the dif- 
ferent bailifs (Schultheissen), the most minute 
matters of the various communes, formed 
here as well as every where else, the prin- 
cipal work. The former independence of 



* The mere enumeration of the various jurisdictions 
which existed in Germany under the Empire, and the 
relations they bore to each other, would fill a volume. 
It may suffice to observe, that a free jurisdiction probably 
means, in the language of the German jurisconsults, a 
jurisdictio administratoria, vicar ia, officialise exercised in 
the name of the State, in contradistinction to a jurisdictio 
patrimonialis, praediatoria, praedialis, &c. The following 
is the order of judicial procedure for the nobility and 
privileged class of officers of the State in the Duchy of 
Nassau, according to Hassel : the Senate of Justice at 
Ehrenbreitstein in the first instance, the Palace Court 
at Wiesbaden in the second instance, and the Supreme 
Court of Appeal at Dietz in the last instance. Trans. 

G 3 



86 GERMANY AND 

the church might have left a weak point, 
but this had been fortunately covered. 
In the union of confessions, the members 
of the clerical order had also been first 
centralised through the testament of the 
superintendents to the survivors, and after- 
wards subjected to a complete change of 
condition by the farming of the church 
lands, by giving salaries to the clergy, and 
creating a central fund for the payment of 
servants of the state, and officers of the 
church in the pay of the government* 
Physicians and advocates, both independ- 
ent classes in every other country, and 
who, as is well known, acted a terrible part 
in the French Revolution, were here, with 
great dexterity, rendered completely harm- 
less. The former, after a very short period 
of activity, became officers of the state? 
whose salaries were partly derived from 
the treasuries of the Communes *, and the 

* A Commune [Gemeinde or Gemeine) or Community, 
the inhabitants of a particular village, or other place, 
who possess certain lands, pasturages, woods, buildings, 
&c. in common. These Communes, like our Corpor- 
ations, are of various degrees of wealth. Some of them 
are very rich, and the privilege of becoming a member 
of them is then sold at a high rate. Their administration 
is altogether republican. Trans, 



THE REVOLUTION. 87 

latter were rendered incapable of filling any 
municipal offices. The incorporated com- 
panies, the degrading remains of feudal 
slavery as they were termed, States within 
the State, and therefore by possibility capa- 
ble of becoming focuses of rebellion, were 
next dissolved. The nobility still re- 
mained, and as many of that body were 
not to be gained by favours, and main- 
tained a troublesome independence, an 
allowable artifice was resorted to, in order 
to sow dissensions between them and the 
third Estate. To the right and left a division 
was made between Ultras who wished to 
do all without the people, and Jacobins who 
proposed to carry every thing with a high 
hand through the people. The former were 
opposed to the privileged part of the Estates, 
and the latter were opposed to such resist- 
ance as might be experienced in the Second 
Chamber. When, at length, after an election 
managed in a suitable manner by the com- 
missioners, the dreaded democracy assem- 
bled, ministerial despotism was enabled to 
take its station quietly in the centre with the 
people, as was pretended ; and that it might 
not be removed from this imposing attitude 

g 4 



88 GERMANY AND 

by the unanimity of the Estates, who car- 
ried up in a body the address of thanks to 
theJPrince, the latter was made to protest 
in some measure against this unanimity, as 
if it were something unconstitutional. Ibel, 
the commissioner of the government, fitted 
out with the power and experience which 
his position gave to him, now trod, in all 
the superiority which a dexterous talent for 
business and a domineering will can give, 
into the midst of a few r deputies, part of 
them dependent on the government, and 
all of them unacquainted with business, 
impeded on all sides, and full of timidity, 
and there he unrolled before them the 
record of his former brilliant transactions, 
decrees, and creations, which they, by 
their approbation, were to seal and to 
sanction. How was it possible for the 
small spark of the democratic principle to 
compare itself with this burning bush ? 
When the Estates, alarmed at so powerful 
a guardianship, demanded a speaker (Syn- 
dicus) as a guide and leader, this w T as pro- 
nounced a piece of silly and ridiculous folly, 
and almost high treason. When districts 
of the country availed themselves of the 



THE REVOLUTION. 89 

right of petitioning the Estates, conceded 
to them by the constitution, and exposed 
to them the real grievances of the country, 
the demagogical opposition, to which we 
have alluded, was happily discovered, and 
a dreadful cry was raised against so asto- 
nishing an attempt ; and at the same time a 
violent persecution was set on foot against 
the originators of this step, which ended 
with expelling an efficient and worthy 
office-bearer from his situation, and finally 
compelling him to exile himself from his 
country. 

Thus all the ways of access to the States, 
except that which was left open to the 
government, were closed up. It had been 
laid down as a principle, that all the rich 
domains of the various parts of the coun- 
try which had been united into the Duchy, 
were the incontestible private property of 
the former Counts and Princes of Nassau, 
when they took the Ducal Hat ; and the 
court was thus rendered wholly independ- 
ent of the grants of the Estates ; and the 
necessities of the State, thronging of them- 
selves into the courses into which they 
have once been directed, from this side also 



90 GERMANY AND 

there was nothing to fear. The taxes had 
been before regulated agreeably to the most 
praiseworthy principles of equality, with 
reference to land and industry ; a consider- 
able portion of the expenses of adminis- 
tration, with the salaries and fees of the 
local authorities and receivers, had been 
thrown on the treasuries of the different 
communes, as were also either wholly, or 
for the greatest part, the allowances to 
physicians, surgeons, midwives, forest- 
officers, in so far as they inspect the woods 
of the communes, schoolmasters, wood and 
field keepers, servants of the church, and 
night-watchmen ; so that nothing remained 
for the Budget but the charges of the 
higher mechanism of the government ; and 
the Estates had hardly any thing to do 
but to revise the tables of income and 
expenditure submitted to them, in the 
manner of a higher audit chamber. They 
deducted from the article of court-buildings 
the sum by which it exceeded the proper 
amount; struck out here and there a few 
trifling articles ; burdened the taxes with 
the redemption of the feudal duties at- 
tached to the domains which formerly, in 



THE REVOLUTION. 91 

a fit of liberality, were about to be re- 
nounced gratuitously ; and, lastly, freed also 
the domain-forests from the rights of usu- 
fruct possessed by the communes, and then 
dissolved themselves in order to carry home 
with them the praise of peaceable, intel- 
ligent, and well-disposed Estates bestowed 
on them by the government, but at the same 
time to meet the loud reproaches of the 
people whom they had disappointed. 

The suppressed discontent, irritated by 
these reproaches, could hardly fail, in the 
nature of things, to break out in some way 
or other in the next assembly ; and as, 
under existing circumstances, this could 
hardly happen in a measured manner, and 
in a vigorous, secure, and firm opposition, 
it found a vent in the violent explosion 
that took place when the favours granted 
to the domains, by pressing severely on 
many of the communes, rendered the in- 
troduction of poor-rates necessary. This 
explosion ought to serve as a lesson to 
arrogance, that human patience has its 
limits, and that, when too much abused, it 
breaks unexpectedly loose, and avenges 
itself on those who presume too much on 



92 GERMANY AND 

it. As, however, all irruptions are, from 
their nature, temporary, and a despotism 
founded on calculation never renounces its 
activity, such a despotism could not fail to 
become in a very short time the master of 
the explosion in question ; and the whole 
of this resistance, which was altogether 
without a plan, ended at last in a second 
act of violence exercised towards another 
office-bearer, and the secret was found out 
of completely annihilating a constitution, 
not bad in itself, by means of itself. 

Thus there was here established a pat- 
tern-state of the modern constitutional 
school, by which all men are made equal 
in one common servitude, and freedom 
appears a mere piece of delusion and 
mockery. The work was executed agree- 
ably to the model of France, a microcosm 
of the macrocosm of Napoleon, and behold 
the master saw that it was good ! Council 
of State, Chambers, Budget, two parties of 
Ultras and Jacobins yoked to the triumphal 
car, from his exalted seat on which the 
charioteer guides it with an iron hand to 
the goal ; in front of the procession, odes 
to freedom, the flourish of trumpets, an 



THE REVOLUTION. 93 

official Moniteur, which at one time waves 
the thyrsus of liberal ideas, and shouts Evoe 
Bache ! at another blows the bird-call with 
which liberal bull-finches * are caught ; and 
then again, as a constable with a staff keeps 
the disordered people in order, bears down 
all opposition with scorn ; here and there 
rubs a scolding mouth with the sweet honey 
of general expressions of liberality, till, 
perceiving the grateful taste, it closes in 
astonishment; then severely chides the most 
modest doubt ; in the train, vanity and shal- 
low self-sufficiency, the rage for organisation 
and innovation, centralising and paralysing, 
show and paper activity, fiscal rapacity, 
impurity and deceit ; and by way of finish 
to all these grand things, Hunt and the 
Spafields meeting in the county of Katzen- 
ellenbogen, and the bliss over and above 
of an investigation into an extensively 
diffused conspiracy. Dreadful folly of an 
age, false and untrue even to the very 
marrow of its bones, which, after it has Ions* 
deceived the world, at last gives credit to 



* Gimjpel {bullfinch) is applied by the Germans to a 
simpleton. Trans. 



94 GERMANY AND 

Its own lie ; and, after stripping off every 
vestige of nature, in its audacious presump- 
tion allows no subject to remain sacred 
from the exercise of its histrionic arts, and 
converts society, state, church, the most 
venerable objects on earth, into a mere 
farce. 

What was brought to a successful ter- 
mination in the manner above described 
in the Duchy of Nassau, had been already 
attempted in Bavaria, by the minister 
Montgelas, who gave it a constitution so 
far back as 1808, and proclaimed a second 
constitution at the period of the Congress. 
This man, who possesses all the qualities, 
both good and bad, which in the preceding 
pages have been ascribed to the whole genus, 
at the very moment when he was grasping 
at the dignity of Chancellor of State, to the 
great amazement of all those who shared his 
opinions and sentiments, in consequence of 
certain circumstances, the real connection 
of which is not yet before the world *, was 

* It is supposed that he was sacrificed to the dislike 
which the Austrian Court entertained towards him, on 
the marriage of a Princess of Bavaria to the Emperor 
Francis. Trans, 



THE REVOLUTION. 95 

suddenly precipitated from his elevation, 
and succeeded by a ministry, not a little 
jealous of its power, indeed, but which nei- 
ther possessed the influence, the craft, nor 
the violence necessary to reduce it into so 
complete and consistent a system. The 
King gave a charter, in which, it is true, 
an excessive anxiety to preserve the pre- 
rogatives of the crown was perceivable ; 
but which placed at the same time the 
commons in a position with respect to the 
throne, that may enable them to rid them- 
selves by degrees of the influence of de- 
fective institutions, and procure the intro- 
duction of better in their stead. The 
re-action on the constitution to which this 
is likely to give rise, may, in turn, improve 
what still remains defective in it. 

Hence the Diet which was here held, 
was something more than one of those blue 
exhalations which ascend for the purpose 
of mocking the age. Much of an objec- 
tionable nature found, no doubt, an admis- 
sion into this assembly, but as it did not 
seat itself in the centre, and from thence 
exercise a preponderating influence over 
the whole, there was not very much to be 



98 GERMANY AND 

said against it, as worthlessness has as 
much a right to be represented as stupidity. 
Hence, after the first apprenticeship was 
over, along with a good deal of heavy help- 
lessness, pettiness of conception, and igno- 
rance of constitutional matters, there was 
developed at the same time in the Second 
Chamber, a trust-worthy business-like un- 
derstanding; and a just, moderate, and 
honourable disposition, open to the recep- 
tion of every thing good and valuable. 
Many of the secret evils by which States 
are oppressed in the present day, were 
there disclosed ; many a steady and pene- 
trating glance was thrown into the late 
odious and abominable times, notwithstand- 
ing all the care which had been taken to 
guard against this ; many a good measure 
was readily adopted by the government, 
and a path was cleared for many institutions 
of an improved nature ; a stop was put for 
the future to glaring abuses, and the dis- 
order of the age was thus brought to a 
crisis. 

When the Chamber, however, in its 
peaceful and unanimous investigation into 
the defects of the commonwealth, having 



THE REVOLUTION. 97 

sounded the extremities, reached by de- 
grees to the internal vital parts, and began 
at length to touch the great and peculiar 
sore by which all the States of the present 
day are consumed, namely, the excessive, 
and beyond all measure extravagant number 
of the double soldiery of the civil and mili- 
tary establishments ; the disordered state of 
the finances occasioned by these numerous 
and brilliant establishments ; the abuses 
caused by these financial disorders, when, 
after resorting to everv form of taxation, 
things had at length come to such a pass, 
that the government held the bank at the 
pharo-table against its own subjects ; the 
cabinet and ministerial despotism which 
interferes even with the administration of 
justice : — then the patience of the liberality 
to which a pretension had been rather in- 
discreetly made, became exhausted ; and 
the whole of the dregs of the bad passions 
with which Germany has so often been 
harassed from the same quarter, were 
again stirred up. The moment was now 
come when the First Chamber considered 
itself called upon to interpose itself as a 
dam against the waves of the Commons, 

H 



98 GERMANY AND 

which had risen to too great a height ; the 
Council of the Kingdom (Reichs-rath *) 
condemned the pretensions of the Second 
Chamber, as being of too practical a nature ; 
the taxes ought, according to this council, 
to be granted magnanimously agreeably to 
the constitution, without an endeavour to 
connect with them any conditions of radical 
improvement ; and after the scandalous 
scene exhibited with respect to the ad- 
dresses of the army, whose admission to 
the constitutional oath had been rejected 
on the ground of its not being a deliber- 
ative, but, on the contrary, a purely 
dependant body, though it was* here, not- 
withstanding, allowed to deliberate on 
constitutional matters, the person of the 
ruler was at last introduced in a manner 
very unsuitable to his dignity, into a dis- 
pute, which, as the first commencement of 
a conflict, whose termination is yet un- 
certain in respect to time, but by no means 
so in respect to result, is of the utmost im- 



# This is the name given to the first Bavarian 
Chamber. Tram, 



THE REVOLUTION. 99 

portance in whatever point of view it is 
considered, 

Similar causes have led to similar results 
in Baden. This country had been for years 
one of the principal foci of the changes 
introduced by the times. More constitu- 
tions than ever were produced by France, 
had there followed one another in rapid 
succession, one of which, in order to give 
something like an air of originality to 
German folly, was drawn up objectively 
and subjectively, according to the title ; and 
the change of ministers had been more 
frequent than that of consuls in ancient 
Rome. The court, by way of fulfilling the 
13th article, gave in like manner a charter, 
which, from the political embarrassment it 
was placed in at the time, was intended to 
conciliate public opinion in its favour, as 
being distinguished above every other con- 
stitution for its liberality. This constitution 
was, in reality, received with very general 
approbation. 

In the assembly which met here, the 

quick, active, animated, and clever spirit 

which the inhabitants possess in a greater 

degree than those of many other coun- 

h 2 



100 GERMANY AND 

tries, soon began to display itself along 
with real talent, and, as far as could be 
seen, a great deal of practical skill. In 
this assembly, too, many important sub- 
jects were brought into discussion ; and if 
occasionally, as for instance in the affairs 
relating to the church and the nobility, 
they sometimes proceeded with a degree 
of partiality, this may well be excused, 
when we think of the mass of absurdity, 
every where in motion, to which it was 
opposed. 

Here also, when affairs had been brought 
to the critical point; when the important 
and appropriate question respecting the 
just participation of the Estates in the de- 
crees of the Federal Diet came to be inves- 
tigated ; when the excessive excrescences 
of the civil list were, as justice demanded, 
cut down in order to cover the deficit ; 
when the miles perpetuus was again called 
on to consent to a deduction (far too small, 
no doubt,) from his allowance ; then the 
court began to view the audacious work 
with alarm, and surprised at the increasing 
seriousness of the undertaking on which it 
had so lightly entered, and little prepared 



THE REVOLUTION. 101 

to satisfy the just claims of a time agitated 
even to its innermost parts, it determined, 
by an abrupt interference, to put a stop at 
once to the proceedings. Here also the 
Prince was unable to conquer his irritated 
sensibility ; he prorogued the assembly, 
with unbecoming haste, in the midst of 
their proceedings respecting the budget ; 
with the violation even of common de- 
cency, the Estates were not dismissed, but 
driven out : on their return to their homes, 
they were placed under a regular quaran- 
tine ; and the constitution, though in form 
entire, was yet, on its very first trial, ma- 
terially violated, as the Estates had been 
prevented from exercising their just rights. 
This furnished another proof of the degree 
of worth of any constitution, which, without 
historical foundation, without the security 
of free institutions, and strong and well- 
established corporations, rests merely on 
the mutable will of a ruler, and can be 
given by one cabinet-order, and taken 
away by another. 

The secret and venerable power of the 
old rightful constitution in Wurtemberg, 
had opposed a better resistance to similar 

o 

II o 



102 GERMANY AND 

irruptions on the part of arbitrary caprice. 
The King, enraged at the unexpected op- 
position he met .with in carrying his well- 
intended purposes into execution, had, 
re-acting with Malchus, thrown himself 
also into the arms of the school already 
described; but the triumph of the moment 
was here succeeded by a complete over- 
throw. To punish this unworthy begin- 
ning, the Nemesis did not recur to dagger 
or poison : a slight error in calculation* 
which concealed itself under figures lil^e a 
serpent under flowers, was sufficient to 
prepare a disgraceful end for this grand 
undertaking. Hence, though after the dis- 
solution of the States, many an impure cry 
was to be heard in that country along with 
the ebullitions of patriotism ; although all 
the arts of seduction of the times were 
then resorted to, and every endeavour 
was made to confound and perplex the 
people ; the cause of plain and unvarnished 
right and jtf&tiGe was at length victo- 
rious. The King, with meritorious self- 
denial, and a confidence worthy of all 
praise, summoned a new constituent as- 
sembly ; and Wurtemberg, as a reward for 



THE REVOLUTION. 103 

its adherence to its ancient rights, and for 
not allowing itself to be deceived into a 
confidence in light-minded theories, now 
enjoys the distinction of which no other 
German people can boast ; that by an ami- 
cable arrangement with the government 
itself, it is preparing its constitution in a 
constitutional manner, and securing it on 
a truly immovable foundation. 

If, in Rhenish-Hesse, the harmoniously- 
concurring and placable way of thinking, 
though yielding nothing to the rights of the 
people, afforded the first tranquillizing and 
grateful phenomenon witnessed for years ; 
on the other hand, the smothered agitation 
which has prevailed in that country for 
some time past, cannot fail again to wound 
it the more deeply. A truly benevolent, 
well-disposed Prince, whose mind is insus- 
ceptible of any evil purpose, but who, per- 
plexed by the times which h6 can with 
difficulty comprehend, allows himself to be 
hurried on to many a mistake that he fre- 
quently endeavours, with an uncommon 
degree of good nature, to make good in an 
affecting manner ; add to this, an extra- 
vagant expenditure on many favourite ob- 
h 4 



104 



GERMANY AND 



jects, though it is less, perhaps, for his own 
sake, than for the sake of those who are 
benefited by them, that he is unwilling to 
determine on retrenchment ; a ministry 
divided among themselves, who, without 
compass, and without knowledge of the 
stars, sail with every wind that blows, 
without knowing whither they are directing 
their course ; an active people, oppressed 
in a number of ways, acquainted with their 
rights, and pursuing them with zeal ; a me- 
ritorious perseverance, and a praiseworthy 
participation in public affairs, not to be 
turned aside by any opposition or resist- 
ance from the prosecution of their purpose 
of enforcing their rights, claims, and de- 
mands : — such are the elements of this 
dispute, which now indeed seems alarming, 
but which, with so much benevolence on 
the one part, and so much firmness on the 
other, cannot fail to have a favourable ter- 
mination. 

The contrast between the North and 
South of Germany, which prevails in ge- 
neral, has, however, its exceptions. The 
newly reformed constitutions of the Tyrol 
and Gallicia, as well as that of the small 

14 



THE REVOLUTION. 105 

territory of Vaduz, which Germany viewed 
with delight for a time, have transplanted 
the lame and timid character of the northern 
conformations into the South; while in the 
North, again, a prudent, active, but very 
self-willed Princess *, opposes her imperious 
and ambiguous liberality to the old rights 
of her subjects, in as tyrannical a manner 
as has ever been witnessed in any of the 
States of the Rhenish confederacy. 

While, in the one part of Germany, the 
political reformation has, by degrees, forti- 
fied itself at a stage which may be com- 
pared with that at which the ecclesiastical 
reformation of the episcopal church of 
England stopped, the dissenting provinces 
of the Rhine may, on the other hand, be 
said to have reached a sort of political Cal- 
vinism, of the description of that of which 
Switzerland before set an example, and which 
the Swabian and Rhenish towns fruitlessly 
endeavoured to obtain, but which the Dutch 
Provinces afterwards, and Relgium at last, 
were more successful in realising. In the 



The Princess of Lippe-Detmokl. Tram. 



106 GERMANY AND 

blunt, austere, unimaginative spirit, pecu- 
liar to the political school . so universally 
established in that quarter,- tbe deputies* of 
the Circle of the Rhine voted in the general 
assembly of the Estates of Bavaria. How- 
ever much, in general affairs, they might 
frequently be carried, away by fixed ideas 
and preconceived opinions, they always 
prqved themselves strenuous and praise- 
worthy representatives in all that related to 
^h,e practical interests of their province. The 
sanie spirit has openly manifested itself in 
mo$£ §f tj-ie -pubJic votes which have been 
gl$£nJn Cis?l^£na*n r Hesjse.* In the smaller 
jjjUstifcjta.op the RJiine, a violent opposition 
.to-the distant governments has been formed ; 
and, in the Prussian territory, where most 
of the Rhinelanders are united together in 
one mass, it could not fail to display itself 
in the most decided manner. 

When these tracts of country were united 
to Prussia, it was as if the extreme points 
of permany had been violently bent to- 
ward^ each other in all directions. A diplo- 



* That part of the Grand Duchy of Hesse on the left 
bank of the Rhine- , w Trans. 



THE INVOLUTION. 107 

matic blessing was indeed pronounced on 
the union, but Heaven, up to this very hour, 
has refused to confirm that blessing. On 
the one hand, we see a State held toge- 
ther solely by the idea of the King, who, 
by cabinet orders and ministerial edicts, 
without a constitution limited and regulated 
by law, wields the sceptre of a mild despot- 
ism ; office-bearers who carry on their oper^ 
ations in secret agreeably to indefinite 
instructions, and who proceed with the 
most tedious formalities, and an adminis- 
tration of justice equally circumspect ' and- 
secret, ancl observant of .rules and prece- 
dents; a military spirit, which, though some- 
what mitigated, is yet of the most rigid arid 
austere character, pervading every thiag, 
and disposed, as it were, to deprim life of 
every thing like volition or consciousness, 
and to hold it tightly pressed down under 
the forms of a relentless subordination. 
On the other hand, we see a people with- 
out any native princes, a country without 
courts, or capitals, a nobility almost wholly 
extinct, an impoverished clergy ; a third 
Estate, till lately not affluent, but raised 
to prosperous circumstances by the saie of 



108 GERMANY AND 

public property, yet a stranger to luxury, 
but feeling its power, and even inclined 
to arrogance ; obedient, but not submis- 
sive, subject to the law, but easily irritated 
by every act of an arbitrary nature, though 
originating in the best intentions ; in all 
things accustomed to what is practical, and 
therefore inimical to whatever is irregular 
or confused ; accustomed to a rapid mode 
of carrying on business, and fond of pub- 
licity ; by no means averse to arms, but 
abominating the stiffness, rigidity, and 
overbearingness which usually accompany 
the military spirit. 

Contrarieties of so decided a nature, 
when first brought into contact, could 
hardly fail to produce a severe shock ; and 
it was impossible that the conflict to which 
it gave rise, should not turn out to the 
disadvantage of the new government, as it 
appropriated to itself whatever there was 
to do, and assigned the natives a passive part. 
From the time, therefore, that the govern- 
ment first forfeited their confidence by its 
attempt at organisation, they betook them- 
selves to observation, and succeeded only 
too soon in discovering all its weaknesses. 



THE REVOLUTION. 109 

The present state of things having been 
unanimously rejected as completely inse- 
cure, their whole attention was immediately 
directed to the progress of the government 
in the business of the constitution. The 
appointment of the council of state was 
viewed with satisfaction as the first intro- 
ductory step to this business, though after 
its appointment it turned out nothing more 
than an administrative board. In like man- 
ner the appointment of a committee for 
framing the constitution was thankfully re- 
ceived, as was the more recent abolition of 
the secret police, and also the institution 
of the immediate justice-commission at a 
former period. When, on the motion of 
the chancellor, three members of the com- 
mittee of justice proceeded through the 
different provinces for the purpose of ob- 
taining a knowledge of the existing and 
former laws and institutions of those pro- 
vinces, this measure, though too long- 
delayed, was also considered in the light of 
an advancement. But when these commis- 
sioners returned, and delivered in a report 
of the various laws and institutions of the 
country, and no second sitting of the com- 



110 &ETIMANY ANB 

mittee was seen to follow, this tardiness in 
the movements of government- began to 
excite an apprehension that it was on the 
point of adopting a retrograde course. 

In the mean time the chancellor visited 
the Rhenish provinces, and his appearance 
gave rise to fresh hopes. He received the 
well known address ; and the discussions 
which took place on that occasion, as they 
were public, could not fail to excite a belief 
that the re-action had at least reached its 
extreme point, and that all the disputes, if 
a spirit of mutual good-will and conciliation 
were only displayed, and an allowance made 
for former misunderstandings, would soon 
be happily settled. But when the King did 
not redeem the promise which his manda- 
tory was fully empowered by him to make; 
when the inhabitants saw that an act in 
every respect legal, and executed with all 
due respect and reverence, subjected them 
to an ungracious reprimand, and that they 
were reproached with doubting the fulfil- 
ment of the royal promise, though they had 
expressly said they did not entertain the 
smallest doubt ; when they saw the King 
express displeasure at the conduct of the 



THE REVOLUTION. Ill 

local administrations, because they allowed 
what they could not with any show of 
justice have prevented; and when those 
only were praised, who by violent proceed- 
ings had stifled the expression of the public 
voice ; the people were silent, as they did 
not even then forget their respect for ma- 
jesty, when they saw it entangled in error ; 
but a rent had taken place, and the old 
wounds which the brilliant semi-official 
and even indecorously witty answer after- 
wards returned, was unable to heal, and 
still less the prolix familiarity of another 
publication following immediately in its 
train, and written with the view of admi- 
nistering consolation, exhortation, and dis- 
suasion, now gaped more widely than ever. 
If the Rhinelanders, on their part, too 
loudly censured the conduct of some mem- 
bers of the nobility on this occasion, they 
thereby proved, that if in the agitations of 
the period through which they had T passed, 
their sense of independence had been very 
much sharpened, they had, at the same time, 
lost the feeling of natural equity. This was 
proved in the clamour, very unreasonable for 
the most part, which was raised against the 



112 GERMANY AND 

step taken by the nobility of the Netherlands 
with the best intentions, and from the purest 
motives, as well as against the paper, which, 
on that occasion, they delivered into the 
hands of the chancellor. As the equitable 
nature of the sentiments which were display- 
ed by the nobility in that paper could not be 
disputed, suspicion attached itself to a pre- 
tended mysticism in the style, which, it was 
said, concealed some secret malice ; and 
having rejected with republican pride the 
co-operation of a body which never can 
again be with us dangerous to the general 
freedom, they had, at the same time, re- 
nouncing in their excessive eagerness the 
old rights on which the claims both of the 
nobles and third Estate were founded, sur- 
rendered themselves at discretion ; and as 
they had not acted agreeably to equity, they 
thus renounced all claim to similar equity 
on the part of the more powerful aristocracy 
elsewhere. 

From that moment, however, the belief 
in a retrogression in the principles of the 
government became rooted in the opinion 
of the public, and every subsequent occur- 
rence has merely served to afford nourish- 



THE REVOLUTION. 113 

ment to this belief. The foundation of the 
University of Bonn, and the very promising 
termination of the labours of the Imme- 
diate-justice-commission, were gratefully 
received from the government ; but the 
impressions produced by the financial oper- 
ations which followed, could not fail to ex- 
tinguish, in a short time, this favourable 
disposition. When the taxes, which were 
abolished by the provisional government, 
on account of their odious nature, were 
successively re-introduced ; when the cus- 
tom-duties, demanded perhaps as a protec- 
tion against foreign countries, interrupted 
all commerce with the interior, and op- 
pressed and impeded the places on the 
frontiers, in a variety of ways ; when a duty 
imposed on brandy, amounting to three- 
fourths of the price of the commodity, by 
putting a stop to its manufacture, ruined the 
agriculturists ; when a duty on must, on 
an average five times the amount of the 
land-tax, was demanded from the impover- 
ished vine-husbandman, which reduced him 
to the necessity of threatening to grub up 
the vines if it was persisted in ; when of all 
the liberality of former years, nothing now 



114 GERMANY AND 

remained but a military law, strained beyond 
all proportion or measure, by which, under 
the pretext of elevated ideas, the whole po- 
pulation, without exception, were reduced to 
a liability to serve in the army ; — then tha 
opposition necessarily diffused itself through 
the whole mass of the people; and when 
they could not, by supplicatory means, ob- 
tain the good they wished, they endeavour- 
ed, at least by protesting, to avert from 
themselves the evil which they appre- 
hended. And when the local administra- 
tions, after having officially proved that the 
existing taxes of the province actually 
amounted to the four rix-dollars demanded 
for each soul, felt themselves under the 
necessity of declaring the introduction of 
new taxes absolutely impossible; and when 
the minister had reproved the town-council 
of Coblentz for the narrowness of their 
views in political economy, disclosed by 
them in their protest, and consoled them 
with the prospect of a speedy imposition of 
still higher duties ; then indeed the rigid 
consistency of a system, which it was im- 
possible to disconcert, to whatever absurd 
length it was pushed, certainly gave rise to 



THE REVOLUTION. 115 

no ordinary degree of astonishment; but 
the people felt, at the same time, that it 
was high time a constitution should set 
some limits to this stoical inflexibility. 

In addition to these political relations, 
the whole of Catholic Germany was agita- 
ted by other considerations of a still higher 
nature. The influence of these consider- 
ations was felt on the Rhine, but most of 
all in Westphalia. The condition of the 
Church, and the disgraceful thraldom in 
which it w r as held, gave rise to them. The 
arrogance which had long existed in Protest- 
ant Germany, after the tri-centenary cele- 
bration of the Reformation, reached the 
most insupportable height, and the excess 
displayed on the one side naturally gave 
rise, on this occasion, as it always has done, 
to an equally strong re-action on the other. 
It was not that just, pious, and modest 
Protestantism, which takes its stand in all 
humility before the gates of the mysterious 
and impenetrable kingdom wherein the 
things that cannot be known are contained, 
and which, though it restricts its belief to 
the written word, does not, on that account, 
trample with contemptuous scorn on the 

i 2 



116 GERMANY AND 

common belief of all ages and times in* 
volved in Catholicism, as something beyond 
measure absurd and objectionable ; — it 
was not in a belief of this description, be- 
tween which, and the common belief of 
Catholicism, the coincidence is always the 
greater, the more room has been allowed for 
pure and disinterested conviction, and the 
further the free enquirer has penetrated into 
the depth of things, that this intolerance had 
its origin; for, on carefully tracing the course 
of each particular part, it will at last be found 
to have an intimate connection with the 
whole ; and when the dross is removed 
from what has been drawn up from the 
depth on both sides* the same silver ore 
meets our view, so that in this respect Pro-; 
testantism and Catholicism may be consi- 
dered, with respect to each other, as in the 
relation which the integral bears to the dif- 
ferential calculus. 

But here* also, it is that spirit of self-con- 
ceit, which, unable to dissever even the ex- 
ternal ties of gravity, presumes, notwith- 
standing, to tear itself loose internally from 
all that is historical ; which, not satisfied with 
examination and enquiry into the universal 



THE REVOLUTION. 117 

laws by which things are connected toge- 
ther, attaches itself, with an insolent refrac- 
toriness, to what is perishable, fleeting, and 
unreal ; and, from a mode of viewing ob- 
jects superficial in the extreme, deems its 
imaginations, its vanities, and passions, to 
be great and important laws of nature, and 
takes its seat by cross-roads to communicate 
instruction to history, which, borne along in 
her rapid career by her celestial coursers, 
perceives not the mote that plays in her 
beams. From this spirit proceeded the 
clamour which was raised in Protestant 
Germany, and which resounded over the 
Rhine, that Catholicism in itself was dead, and 
its burial had merely been neglected; that its 
dogmas were untenable, and even altoge- 
ther irrational ; that the infallibility of the 
Church was the true slavery of the mind ; 
and that its hierarchy was the work of an 
odious priestcraft, and an insupportable 
tyranny. In its zeal and brotherly love, it 
then compassionately offered to accompany 
the corpse to the grave, and to do the last 
honours to the departed ; and having burst 
asunder the degrading chains by which the 
votaries of Catholicism were weighed down, 

i 3 



118 GERMANY AND 

it proposed that they should then take the 
field together, to effect the downfall of 
tyrants. 

On the same grounds as those that for- 
merly united together the princes against 
the Imperial power, which had long been 
a mere shadow, a similar union was 
preached against the Pope, the great tyrant 
of Christendom, whose spiritual power is 
now reduced to the same low ebb. When 
the Catholics held their tongues, and mere- 
ly shrugged their shoulders, at sight of this 
commencement, the public attention was 
then directed to the Jesuits in Switzerland, 
where a dreadful phantom was conjured up. 
The zealots of Protestantism collected toge- 
ther, in the Opposition Journal, and others 
of a similar character, all the impurity of 
ancient times, all the bad and wicked acts of 
which the Popes had ever been guilty, into 
one heap, and, like the Berlin watchmen of 
Zion, in former days, they scented out se- 
cret intrigues in every direction, and calum- 
niated and abused most honourable men 
who refused to abandon their belief, and 
their conviction. That that admirable de- 
scription of liberality, which would concede 
every thing to power, if power will only 



THE REVOLUTION. 119 

assume the forms to which it is attached, and 
second its private views, might here also be 
displayed in all its perfection, the prin- 
ciple adopted in Protestant churches, 
namely, that the prince is the first bishop 
of his country, was now, we were told, to be 
extended also to the Catholics who were sub- 
ject to Protestant governments. Inthisman- 
ner the prince, already commander in chief, 
supreme judge, and police director, propri- 
etor of the land which the cultivators hold 
from him by lease, was also, as Pontifex 
maximum to sit in judgment on men's con- 
sciences, in order that, like Henry the 
Eighth, by act of Parliament the defender 
and supreme head of the Church of Eng- 
land, but, in reality, its tyrant, oppressor, 
and plunderer, he might preside over con- 
vocations, pass bills of six articles, and pub- 
lish Institutions and Eruditions of Christian 
Men*; and that, after his example, should 

* Henry the Eighth, without consulting the Convo- 
cation, published a manual of faith, called the Institution 
of a Christian Man, and, soon afterwards, another, called 
the Erudition of a Christian Man, differing from the 
former, to both of which he in turn required the belief of 
the nation. Trans. 

i 4 



120 



GERMANY AND 



fanaticism again raise its head, he might 
burn those who adhere to the Pope, and 
break on the wheel those who abjure him. 
Hence the clamour against the Bavarian 
Concordat, the most objectionable parts of 
which are the concessions therein made to 
the State ; and hence the tender regard for 
Wessenberg, who may be a well-meaning 
man, but who has acted unjustly in taking 
refuge behind temporal power, in order to 
succeed in his impure purpose, and realize 
his ill-founded claims against the Curia 
of Rome ; and thus, under the pretext of 
defending the liberty of the Church, actu- 
ally betraying it to the sovereign. * 

The suspicion which these ill-dissembled 
plans excited in men's minds, was consid- 
erably strengthened when a concordat-com- 
mission from the Protestant princes, filled 
for the most part with Protestants, opened 
its sittings, and the preliminary discourse 



* The conduct of Wessenberg is exhibited in a very 
different light, in a volume containing an account of his 
dispute with the Pope, published by Ackermann, in 1 8 1 9, 
under the title of " Reformation in the Catholic Church 
of Germany." Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 121 

of the minister, Von Wangenheim, held out 
hopes that the internal regulation of the 
Catholic church, and its future relations 
with the Pope, would be settled in that 
synod; when a journal blabbed out the pro- 
positions intended to serve as the ground- 
work of the proceedings, which began with 
stripping the Pope of all the functions of 
his primacy, and reducing him to the con- 
dition of a fisherman abandoned by his first 
predecessor the Apostle, in order to follow 
the Lord ; and when at length they learned 
that the decree for the abolition of celibacy 
in a neighbouring country, neatly copied 
out and ready for signatures, had found its 
way into the minutes, and would have been 
carried into execution, but for one of the 
courts concerned, which dissuaded this 
measure merely on account of the burden 
of the widows' pensions: — all this could 
not fail to have the most unfavourable in- 
fluence on public opinion, though the re- 
sult of the labours of this commission tran- 
quillised those at least to whom they were 
known; for the extension of the right of 
election to the inferior clergy in deaneries, 
as well as the establishment of the princi- 



122 GERMANY AND 

pie that bishops should only be tried by their 
peers, weremeasures in every respect deserv- 
ing of the most unqualified approbation. 
Those however who were at all acquainted 
with Catholic affairs, could not fail to be firm- 
ly persuaded that the Curia of Rome would 
never renounce its right to send a delegate 
to represent the public ministry in such tri- 
bunals, nor tolerate the schism which the 
petty jealousy of temporal sovereignty had 
introduced into the hierarchy by the aboli- 
tion of archbishops ; and that it would now 
be less than ever disposed to forget itself so 
far as to concede to Protestant princes the 
right of naming Catholic bishops. 

Prussia, containing within its bounds 
more than four millions of Catholics, had 
not acceded to the union ; and from this re- 
fusal an inference was drawn that it was de- 
termined not to allow itself to be surpassed 
in point of liberality on this occasion. The 
King, on taking possession of his new terri- 
tories, had made the most distinct pro- 
mises ; the chancellor had repeated them 
in the audience to which an allusion has 
already been made ; and the concession of 
the right of election, demanded by the 



THE REVOLUTION. 1 23 

chapter of Munster, had been viewed as a 
pledge for the fulfilment. But the line of 
conduct now adopted, was an exact repeti- 
tion of what took place respecting the con- 
stitution ; and the church, to the scandal of 
all men, was suffered to remain in a more 
miserable state than it ever knew under the 
French dominion, and told to subsist, as 
well as it could, on the pitiful means as- 
signed for its support. The Holy Alliance, 
written out on parchment, was carefully 
preserved in the archives ; edifying dis- 
courses on piety and Christian virtue had 
partly driven out the old style of diplo- 
matic formality : but the Christian rule, to 
give every one his own, was, in substance, 
though not in appearance, as much violated 
as ever. The last domains, the miserable 
remains of the grand robbery, and, at the 
same time, the only existing security for the 
debt of the country, and the only source 
from which the church could possibly be 
endowed, was exposed to sale, in defiance 
of every protestation ; the whole of the mi- 
nistry of state, unmindful of the royal debt, 
subscribed the contract of sale ; as if the 
subscription of numbers could give a more 



124 GERMANY AND 

legal character to the act; and as if what in 
itself is unchristian could become Christian 
by the participation of several persons in 
the same sin. The brood of miserable so- 
phists which this age has hatched, and who 
are always ready, for a paltry fee, to prosti- 
tute their talents to every power that will 
employ them, now taught, that the State 
could never consider itself in peace and se- 
curity so long as the servants of the Church 
should not, like other officers, be fed from 
its bounty. Moreover it was said, domains 
only serve to stimulate the cupidity of the 
enemy, and it would be better, therefore, at 
once to free the country from so dangerous 
a possession ; upon the very same principle, 
that the documents and manuscripts belong- 
ing to the province, recently brought back 
from Paris, were, under the pretence of in- 
security, conveyed to the Prussian capital. 

When, still more recently, the spiritual 
foundations were suppressed, without the 
concurrence of the parties interested ; 
when the Calvinist church of the country 
could, with difficulty, defend its liberties 
against the ministry, and the various 
governments, in the question respecting 



THE REVOLUTION. 125 

mixed marriages, which ought only to be 
arranged with the Pope, attempted to com- 
pel by force the Catholic clergy to accede to 
their views ; when one of these govern- 
ments, in the heat of dispute, even pro- 
ceeded so far as to place the priests under 
the superintendence of the burgomasters, 
and the clergy, who had done nothing more 
than their duty, were accused, in a cabinet 
order, of intolerance ; when various other 
doings, accusations, and disappointments, 
became generally known in their details ; — 
then public opinion was not long in deter- 
mining as to the part which was to be 
taken, and unanimously declared for the 
clergy, who, covered by this double shield, 
remained secure and immovable. The go- 
vernment now betook itself to the general 
negativeness of the age, by way of retreat ; 
but suspicion was wakened, and that dispo- 
sition of the Catholics inclining them to the 
historical, which alone could relax the rigid 
political feeling, already compared by us to 
that of theCalvinist confession, now irritated 
in its turn, added greatly to the former fer- 
mentation. 

This fermentation has been most loudly 



126 GERMANY AND 

displayed in writing. After Prussia had 
subjected the public journals to a timid, 
anxious, and petty censorship, which could 
not even tolerate the Westphalische Anzei- 
ger 9 another asylum was sought for the free 
expression of opinion. Such an asylum 
was found in the constitution of Weimar, 
one of the fundamental laws of which was, 
the abolition of all censorship. This con- 
stitution, which, from the limited nature of 
the relations of the state of Weimar, has ne- 
ver, up to this hour, produced any import- 
ant results, with the exception perhaps of 
the disbanding of regular soldiers, as they 
were found incompatible with the charges 
of an expensive court in so small a territory, 
had, from the freedom of discussion which 
it promised, acquired an importance in the 
eyes of all Germany. From thenceforward 
began the petty warfare of the age, strug- 
gling for emancipation with that state- 
police which would restrain it with all its 
power and impotence in a condition of the 
most degrading thraldom. Whilst the Isis *, 



* Physiological, scientific, metaphysical, and political 
journals, published at Weimar. Trans. * 



THE REVOLUTION. 127 

shaking the sistrum * of elementary nature, 
explained the hieroglyphics of animal life, 
the vulture-headed Osiris f waved with a 
powerful hand his scourge over every 
abuse, and Anubis f , the Latrator, stood 
sentinel at the gates of the kingdom of 
mind, watching lest power should attack it 
by surprise ; whilst the Nemesis f anxiously 
endeavoured to keep within the bounds of 
moderation and rule, and though constantly 
declining in energy, sowed much good and 
valuable seed, especially in the higher cir- 
cles ; whilst the Patriot f, with intelligence, 
decision, and dexterity, defended opinions, 
very often characterised by their partial- 
ity;— in answer to their loud call, other 
voices resounded from the mountains of 
Switzerland, through Wurtemberg, and to- 
wards the Danube, where the Allgemeine 
Zeitung J, to the no small entertainment of 



* Sistrum, a brazen instrument, a species of rattle 
used in the rites of Isis. Trans. 

f See the note on the preceding page. 

X A journal well known in this country, published at 
Augsburg, formerly a free Imperial city, now part of 
Bavaria. Trans. 



128 GERMANY AND 

the public, opened aFair of Plundersweiler*, 
in which buyers and sellers, mountebanks 
and gypsies, honest men and rogues of all 
descriptions, passed and repassed each other, 
always, however, under the vigilant super- 
intendence of the local magistrate f; and 
then illuming the Upper Rhine with co- 
ruscations of intellect, and ascending the 
Maine, burst forth with a loud report, heard 
throughout all the south of Germany ; while 
not a tone nor a sound was heard in the 



* A dramatic satire, by Goethe, in which French 
tragedy is very roughly handled. Trans. 

f The Allgemeine Zeitung was open to communica- 
tions from all parties in all countries. The same num- 
ber would frequently contain an article from an agent of 
the French ministry, attacking the Liberals and Ultras ; 
an article from the Liberals attacking Ultras and Mi- 
nisters, and an article from another correspondent abus- 
ing all three ; articles in praise of and against constitu- 
tions, and recommending and condemning arbitrary mea- 
sures. The proprietor, M. Cotta, of Stutgard, in Wur- 
temberg, is one of the greatest booksellers in Europe, 
and distinguished himself, in the Estates of Wurtem- 
berg, by his speeches in favour of the government. As 
he is a privy counsellor of Prussia, the conduct of Prus- 
sia was always touched with a tender hand. Such was 
the Allgemeine Zeitung. What it is at present it is 
hardly possible to say. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 129 

mute north, except that in the tree town of 
Bremen*, at one time only wavering and ti- 
mid, and in Hamburgh, where the Observer f 
strove, with number and measure, to com- 
prehend the measureless age, an effort was 
made to save, in some degree, its honour. 
These voices formed altogether a chorus, 
not always indeed of the most harmonious 
description, nor the most observant of the 
laws of prosody, but which, nevertheless, 
called to the recollection of the buskined 
heroes, who with tragic step stalked over 
the stage, many a wholesome practical rule 
of life, many a valuable truth which had 
escaped them, and many a useful advice 
which they had despised. 

But this chorus, long expelled from the 
modern stage, which has adopted, instead 
of it, confidants and gentlemen in waiting, 
having thrust itself forward so uncalled for, 
and set at defiance the three unities, with- 
out the least consideration for the refine- 
ments of high life, was little relished at 
court, and endured only for a time with 



* The Bremen Journal. Trans. 

f The German Observer. Trans. 

K 



130 GERMANY A1?D 

great impatience. The unrelenting egotism 
which prevails in German courts soon con- 
certed measures for the removal of this 
odious innovation. Diplomatic campaigns 
were commenced against the journalists, in 
which, as in grand hunting-matches, the 
noble animal is provoked by dogs, teased 
with hallooings, and chased by pursuing 
hunters, till at last lie falls down breathless, 
or sees himself under the necessity of 
plunging into water or bogs. The German 
forms of judicial proceedings were precisely 
such a bog to the persecuted writers in the 
State, in which a freedom from censorship 
had lately been established ; the most ar- 
dent of these writers, after remaining a very 
short time in this mud-bath, found the 
cooling quite sufficient to deter them from 
exerting themselves any longer with an 
over-abundant zeal in the cause of their 
country ; and the German assessorial-jury, 
(schoffen-jmy,) in beautiful figures of rhe- 
toric, pursued with fire and lightning those 
who thereby escaped a watery death. That 
court liberality might here also become the 
derision of the world, the inconvenient te- 
diousness of all constitutional forms was 



THE REVOLUTION. 131 

soon laid aside, and after allowing Oken to 
choose between a rope for himself, or the 
continuance of his Isis, they without cere- 
mony soon dismissed both him and his 
journal. 

Others, foreseeing this fate, and having 
too much self-regard to expose themselves 
in such a manner to the rage of the agitated 
elements, had prudently adopted a safer 
course, and entered into an amicable ar- 
rangement with power for mutual satisfac- 
tion. To speak of liberty and liberal senti- 
ments in general terms, while in practice 
they glossed over and justified every act of 
despotic violence, and every detestable in- 
stitution, seemed to them the only course 
compatible with an age in which all regard 
for justice was laid aside. It was allowable 
to exhibit on the parade all the heroes of Plu- 
tarch, provided every man were held up as 
insane who wished, in any manner, to imitate 
them. To repeat abuse against the nobility; 
to speak on ecclesiastical affairs in the tone of 
bold illumination ; to treat the Jesuits with in- 
sult; to rail against the middle ages ; to in- 
veigh as much against feudal oppression, as 
the heart could desire; to arraign the Ul- 

k 2 



132 GERMANY AND 

tras in France, and expatiate on their folly ; 
to exhibit mysticism in all its nakedness ; 
to hold forth against bad passions, and the 
prejudices which every where obstruct the 
progress of improvement ; to enlarge, with 
energy and freedom, on the blunders of the 
King of Spain; and to rally, from time to 
time, the German John Bull ; —this is the 
liberal arena on which they display their 
skill and activity. On the other hand, they 
are ready to cover with the cloak of Love 
the most infamous acts of tyranny, of him 
whose bread they eat ; concede to him, with 
the most affectionate kindness, every ex- 
ception from elevated principle, and to put 
themselves forward on all occasions as his 
champions. On these conditions, letters of 
marque are then issued out against the 
neighbouring governments, till they are 
weak enough to come into their terms, when 
a mandate is immediately issued that it 
would be illiberal and injurious to the Ger- 
man cause, to dwell longer on the faults hi- 
therto stigmatised by them. Parasites of 
princes, torturers of the truth, hypocrites 
in politics, impudent sophists, whose opi- 
nions are as much at the command of the 



THE REVOLUTION. 138 

court, as they wished the church to be ; — 
these wretches are to be found in every 
part of Germany. They know, and praise, 
and lend a helping hand to each other, and as 
false friends of the cause, they are more dan- 
gerous than its open enemies, as they blind 
and confuse the people with the show of li- 
berality which they are perpetually making. 
Opinion, therefore, irritated as much at 
the falsification of the simple truth, in 
which these personages indulge, as at its 
entire suppression by others, has begun to 
betray rather a disinclination for the press, 
and a fondness for oral speech and tradi- 
tion. From the animation which charac- 
terises the present movements of society ; 
from the rapid circulation of opinions, and 
the prodigious intercourse which brings the 
most distant objects in contact with each 
other, public life may be said to have be- 
come completely transparent ; and in this 
medium minds approach so near to each 
other, that they become like a conducting 
chain, along which opinions, like lightning, 
flash with rapidity from one extremity to 
the other, in all directions. Hence nothing 
that happens in any quarter remains hid 

k 8 



134 GERMANY AND 

from tradition ; for as all feel the ignominy 
which attaches to their country, and every 
man wishes to throw it on his neighbour ; 
in like manner one individual always loudly 
proclaims the honour of another, that the 
same favour may be shown to himself in 
return. The opinion which is formed re- 
specting things and persons, is, therefore, 
generally founded on facts ; and though at 
first adopted, perhaps, on light grounds, 
this error is soon corrected by diversity of 
views. Mitigated or sharpened at pleasure, 
it seldom remains unjust for any length of 
time ; though an age, irritated beyond mea- 
sure at the frequent deceptions which it has 
experienced, may often feel too little love 
for individuals, and too strong a disposition 
to condemn them. 

In this severe tribunal of the living all 
the printed lies above alluded to pass for 
nothing ; all the beautiful phrases are strip- 
ped from off the truth which they conceal. 
Those who sally forth in the dark, wrapped 
up in the wide mantle of human vanity, are 
marked with the names which have been 
assigned them in this tribunal ; and facts 
and events ? supposed to be shrouded in 



THE REVOLUTION. 135 

concealment, are known to the whole 
world. The parties concerned are alone 
seldom aware of this, except their con- 
science gives them an obscure intimation 
of it, when they sometimes attempt an an- 
swer without any previous challenge. The 
more the press is fettered or poisoned, the 
more this tribunal is severe and unrelent- 
ing, and its decress are generally injurious 
to those who practise this constraint or fal- 
sification, and have now no opportunity of 
defending themselves. Many events, which 
appear inexplicable, can only be cleared up 
and rendered intelligible by a knowledge of 
this traditional opinion of the people. 

During the various movements occa- 
sioned by the events and incidents already 
alluded to, the Liberals, as they are called, 
who in the years of our liberation were only 
agreed in general as to the necessity of the 
introduction of a better and more worthy 
condition of things in Germany, without 
coming to any understanding as to the 
way in which this was to be effected, di- 
vided themselves into two leading parties. 
The one, called the Historical, were of opi- 
nion, that a better state of things formerly 

k 4 



136 GERMANY AND 

existed in Germany, when united under one 
Protector, and divided again into members 
and parts subordinate to these members, 
provinces, estates, and flourishing corpora- 
tions, it remained secure within itself, free, 
energetic, and rich in its peculiar manners 
and customs, and independent organisation, 
externally honoured, esteemed, dreaded, 
and commanding, and in a situation to re- 
pel, with ease, every foreign force which 
should attempt to attack it. They were 
further of opinion, that confusion and dis- 
ease first crept into this flourishing body, 
from the head becoming stupid and besot- 
ted, and the members wanton and arrogant ; 
that from the continual increase of this pro- 
portion, the disorder had perpetually gain- 
ed ground, till at length, after the Reform- 
ation, it broke out in that furious pa- 
roxysm which introduced into the empire the 
organic defect of a dissension, hitherto in- 
curable ; a wound inflicted with a poisoned 
sword, like that of Titurel, from which, 
like him, without dying and without re- 
covery, it continued to drag out a miser- 
able existence for two or three centuries, 
till hostile power at last overthrew the 



THE REVOLUTION. 137 

reeling and marrowless body, trod it under 
foot, bound it to the triumphal car, drag- 
ged up and down the dishonoured remains, 
a melancholy spectacle for gods and men, 
and scattered about the mutilated members, 
as Medea did those of Absyrtes. 

They were further of opinion, that as, 
with respect to the people, the form alone 
is perishable ; and as, after every decay, a 
regeneration in another form must follow, 
the new Germany ought necessarily to be 
born again in the peculiarity of the old, in 
its customs and ways of thinking, from the 
elements still existing, and in the type 
which still unconsciously pervades all their 
efforts at developement ; in order that men 
may see that the spirit of the fathers still 
dwells with the children, and that they are 
not a new people, the bastards of the neigh- 
bouring nations, who have found their way 
into the country, and built another temple 
on the heights of Garizim. 

They were further of opinion, that the 
problem which these times were called on 
to solve was, the removal of all the addi- 
tions introduced by the corruptions of cen- 
turies ; the abandonment of all that in the 



138 GERMANY AND 

reprehensible departure from history and 
the nature of things, depraved selfishness, 
senseless vanity and despair, built, without 
any foundation, in empty space, especially 
in the last two centuries ; the renunciation 
of the old blind self-love which, by a dread- 
ful example, was taught that every national 
calamity must inevitably fall on the heads 
of individuals ; and then collecting toge- 
ther again the detached threads which, 
amidst all the confusion, are still discernible 
in our manners, sentiments, and institu- 
tions ; joining new threads, where the 
changes effected in our relations render 
such a proceeding advisable, and thus re- 
uniting the separate elements, and holding 
them together by these bonds in one entire 
whole ; the introduction of new life into 
that which is no longer possessed of life, 
where possible, and the revival of the old 
animal spirits ; the extrication of what is 
truly good, which lies hid under the rub- 
bish of our public life, thereby effecting the 
restoration of a new Germanv from the cor- 
ruption of the old. 

The other party, by which the above was 
immediately encountered, considered things 



THE REVOLUTION. 139 

from another point of view. What, said 
they, have we to do with old Germany? 
What are these rags of old splendour to 
us ? It may have been good enough in its 
day, as it was founded on the circumstances 
of the times in which it existed, but it is 
now gone for ever. How ridiculous the 
superstition which affects to idolize the 
bones of old heroes and saints ! What do 
these knights want with our times ? Their 
spirit is no longer among us, their castles 
lie broken on every mountain and hill ; the 
old cathedrals are deserted, and another 
faith has found its way into them. These 
institutions and regulations may have been 
suitable for their age; but the rubbish and 
ruins of them, which still remain in society, 
are only a burden to us ; and their parch- 
ments lie mouldering in our archives. In 
these remains we now see only predial sla- 
very, violence, and superstition ; feudal op- 
pression, and the figures of a few great 
men, wandering about in the dark night of 
the middle ages, as in the shades below, 
whom no dead-offerings can conjure again 
into life. Two tremendous events, which 
also belong to history, the Reformation 



140 GMMANY AND 

and the Revolution, have separated them 
from us. Another people has since occu- 
pied the seats of the old, new in manners, 
sentiments, and ways of thinking, endowed 
with other rights and other necessities. 
Another world has since emerged from the 
flood, in the place of the departed middle 
ages. Forms become old ; what is muta- 
ble comes and goes ; but a new life is per- 
petually springing up with verdant fresh- 
ness ; and as the ages continue to flow, and 
the relations of men are in a state of con- 
stant change, every succeeding generation 
ought prudently to build in the manner 
which best suits its own necessities. Every 
present age must raise structures for itself, 
as it alone can know what may be useful 
and serviceable for it ; and the house will be 
found most convenient if built agreeably to 
a particular plan. As old Germany is dis- 
solved, things have returned to the prime- 
val condition that existed previous to the 
constitution of the empire ; a state of things 
with respect to which history can afford 
little instruction. But if you will take his- 
tory for your guide, then let the Revolu- 
tion be your instructor. The course of 



THE REVOLUTION. 141 

many lazy centuries has been filled in that 
event in the period of a few years. The 
history of the world has there passed before 
your own eyes, andyet you have lived without 
reading it. Your own heart and your own 
senses might have enabled you to see and 
comprehend it, while the history of the 
middle ages appears before your eyes, like 
a pale nebulous speck seen through a tele- 
scope. 

This contrariety, only in another pro- 
vince, is the very same which exists be- 
twixt Catholicism and Protestantism, and 
therefore every man who in his modest 
enquiries has penetrated into the depth of 
history and of his own being, and has 
withal retained the plain simplicity of na- 
tural feeling, and a clear view, undisturbed 
by preconceived opinions and passions, 
easily recognises this contrariety in the in- 
most recesses of the higher and nobler parts 
of his own nature. If, for instance, it can- 
not be denied that every independent peo- 
ple, along with what is common to every 
other, possesses something peculiar to it- 
self, which makes its appearance in its his- 
tory and in every part of its being ; and if, 

12 



142 GERMANY AND 

moreover, every individual of that people 
possesses a character common to the whole, 
and as by the external bond of the same 
language he can communicate with all, his 
feelings and modes of thinking are equally 
connected by an internal bond of sympathy 
with them : then it follows that whatever 
each separate and purified peculiarity inde- 
pendently generates must necessarily be in 
harmony with that which history has pro- 
duced in the whole community. This pe- 
culiarity will not renounce its connection 
with history, but will always act unconsci- 
ously under its influence. 

On the other hand, the historic party will 
exclude neither the Reformation nor the Re- 
volution from the history which they would 
consult ; — because they are aware, that 
history, as a whole, is perpetually renewed 
in the history of each particular state ; and 
that as the history of the Jews and that of 
the Greeks is under other circumstances 
that of the Germans, the English Re- 
volution is, in like manner, that of the 
French. Both these Revolutions have cast 
up, as the most essential institution, a Com- 
mons House, for which, even in the middle 



THE REVOLUTION, 143 

ages, an effort was also made in Italy, and 
at a more recent period in Germany, under 
the first Swabian Emperors ; and it was 
chiefly because such a Commons House 
was not obtained, that the empire was worn 
out and torn to pieces in the revolt of Swit- 
zerland, the quarrels between the unions 
of the towns, and the princes and nobles, 
and afterwards in the war of the peasantry. 
As all the religious confessions centre in 
God, in like manner both these parties were 
connected by the idea of country, and they 
remained united so long as they retained 
this idea; and the enthusiasm which it 
excited in men's minds at the time of our 
liberation, continued to prevail, though the 
historical principle evidently preponder- 
ated, because it seemed the most inimical 
to the French. 

But enthusiasm operates only by starts, 
and for a few moments in history. During 
the long intervening periods, the scene is 
occupied by passions and interests that con- 
tinue to widen more and more the breach 
which, during the ebullition, appears slight 
and of little importance, till it reaches an 
extremity where every attempt to heal it 



144 GERMANY AND 

becomes impossible. The historical prin- 
ciple is a generality, which, in its wide ex- 
tent, comprehends objects of the utmost 
diversity. If the better way of thinking had 
merely adhered to what was best in the re- 
mains of former times, the different inte- 
rests might have found their advantage in 
this ; and if the former inclined more to 
earlier and less corrupted times, the latter 
were more inclined to the more recent 
times, in which selfishness had yet a fresh 
root. But in addition to what was really 
valuable, every abuse, every prejudice, every 
thing torpid and dead, was called his- 
torical ; and the period antecedent to 1806, 
in Prussia, found even its admirers, who 
called themselves the friends of the 
good old times. These parties were joined 
again by two classes, who, in Germany, 
easily find their way into every good cause, 
and soon become masters of it, namely, the 
visionaries and the pedants. The former, 
in their dreams of the middle ages, peopled 
them with the contents of the old books of 
chivalry. The latter again clung to all that 
was torpid and inanimate, would admit 
nothing as documentary but the dead 



THE REVOLUTION. 145 

letter; and the book of Haller*, which* 
with much that is good and meritorious, 
contains also much that is erroneous, inter- 
preted according to the views of each class, 
formed schools among both. 

With this theoretical trifling, practical 
interests of a more powerful and irritating 
nature came into operation. Among the 
institutions still in actual existence which 
have reached us from the past ages, that of 
nobility was the one which possessed the 
most importance, and of which the influence 
was most immediately felt in public life. 
The nobles had, at the Congress, succeeded 
in obtaining a separate article in favour of 
themselves, declaring them the most pri- 
vileged class in the state. As the territorial 
princes, at one time on an equality in point 
of rank with them, had now outgrown 
them, and both at the Congress and the 
Diet would concede nothing to them, nor 
consent to the smallest sacrifice, but con- 
trived to attend exclusively to their own 



* A Swiss author, whose writings are held in as great 
aversion by a large class in Germany, as the writings of 
Bonald are bv the Liberals in France. Tram, 



146 GERMANY AN0 

interests ; these nobles in their turn ex- 
perienced no wish to show themselves more 
magnanimous than those who were more 
powerful than themselves. They insisted 
therefore on what they in turn called their 
ancient rights, and explained the above 
article in the manner best calculated to 
promote their own advantage. 

But when the period of execution came, 
and when their indemnification for the most 
part could only take place at the expense 
of the commons, the latter raised a violent 
opposition, and the old times on which 
these claims were founded became, on that 
account, an object of suspicion. When the 
long series of other privileges and demands, 
from the highest to the lowest, in all their 
degrees, connected themselves with the 
claims of the nobles* and when so many 
princes delayed the fulfilment of their pro- 
mises, all this delay and hesitation was 
ascribed to the nobility who possess their 
ear. This, however, was not altogether 
just, for if there is any room for complaint 
in this respect, the courtiers alone ought to 
bear the accusation. In consequence of 
this constantly increasing irritation, the 



THE REVOLUTION. 147 

past times could not fail to attract to them- 
selves a great part of the aversion for which 
the present times were responsible, and, 
in the agitation that took possession of 
men's minds, history appeared to them 
only in the light of an armoury, wherein 
every absurd pretension, every tyrannical 
claim, and every brutal or more refined 
despotism, may find the armour necessary 
to its designs. 

While Germany, from the complication 
of its relations, wore itself down in this 
manner, and prepared the way for a fresh 
convulsion, and a repetition of its former 
self-forgetfulness, France had speedily re- 
erected the stage which fell to pieces with 
the overthrow of Napoleon, and, instead of 
the grand tragic pieces derived from the 
times of Imperial Rome, grand civic-dramas, 
Henriades with the necessary addition of 
liberality of sentiment, and exhibited with 
the best ensemble, came now into vogue. 
There, in strophes and anti-strophes, ultras 
and liberals carried on a powerful combat : 
they divided themselves to the right and 
left in bands and parties, which, when 
necessary, advanced in a combined mass 

l 2 



148 GERMANY AND 

against the centre, and thus separating one 
moment and uniting again the next, they 
besieged ministers in the court citadel. 
This drama, which was acted with spirit 
and dexterity, began again to amuse the 
Germans in the chagrin caused by their 
own domestic affairs. They immediately 
remarked, that the ultras were the very 
same people of the middle ages, who, 
descending from the north in their long 
and stiff cues, preached the cane and the 
cudgel, and predial slavery, the Prussian 
system and secresy, and whatever else had 
at home gladdened their ear with similar 
sounds of delight. The liberals again 
seemed to be pretty much like themselves, 
to entertain the same wishes, to suffer the 
same evils, and to combat for the same 
cause. Easily appeased, and soon forget- 
ting old grudges, in the good-natured way 
peculiar to them, they soon began again to 
acquire a relish for the light French wines, 
sipping them at first with moderation, and 
with a feeling of bashfulness, and merely 
for the sake of forgetting their domestic 
chagrin ; but gradually drinking them from 
habit, and pushing the pleasure to intoxi- 



THE REVOLUTION. 149 

cation. When once heated, they began to 
become clamorous, and to take part in the 
conflict, first by their acclamations and 
encouragement, and soon afterwards by 
scuffles among themselves. Although the 
emancipation of Germany is partly con- 
nected with the condition of the liberals in 
France, as its repose and security are with 
that of the ultras, with their usual disinter- 
estedness they did not hesitate a moment 
to take part against the latter, and put up 
the most fervent prayers for their complete 
destruction and annihilation. 

When the French, so contrary to their 
expectations, found new shoots of friend- 
ship germinating in the hearts of the 
Germans who had returned from the cru- 
sade, whom they believed to be still filled 
with indignation on account of late insults, 
the old waning hope began to revive within 
them, and they determined not to suffer 
these good dispositions to pass unprofited 
by. They established in the Times, as well 
as in German papers, peculiar tribunes for 
the affairs of Germany ; in which the Fox 
once more, though still rather vaguely, 
preached to the Geese, testified to them 

l 3 



150 GERMANY AND 

their gratitude for their kindness, and sym- 
pathy with their welfare, assured the libe- 
rals of every assistance, and promised to 
do his best again for them after his own 
domestic affairs were in some measure 
arranged. 

The courts of the west of Germany, with 
whose sovereignty the French liberality, 
which had become reconciled to Napoleon, 
was more compatible than the German 
liberality, which insisted on the unity of 
the country so much an object of abhor- 
rence to them, in addition to the establish- 
ment of a solid liberty, gave free admission, 
under the French stamp, to that freedom of 
discussion which was a contraband com- 
modity at home, smoothed the way for the 
foreign bride, and allowed her to be con- 
ducted with pipes and cymbals throughout 
the whole land. When the hills and valleys 
of the Confederation of the Rhine rung 
once more with the delightful notes of the 
voice which they so well knew, it was heard 
by the tribe who, when the tempest of the 
Lord passed over the age, buried them- 
selves in the alarm of an evil conscience in 
holes and corners ; and they now crept 



THE REVOLUTION. 151 

forth to bask once more in the sunshine, 
and when they perceived the procession 
they joyfully followed in its train. The 
admirable genus of liberals, who pursue 
liberality as a fashionable elegance, which 
cannot fail to ensure them success with 
high and low, great and small, and who 
serve God as well as Belial, at once per- 
ceived their opportunity, and snatched it 
by the forelock. Others, who had carefully 
preserved the old ideas imprinted on their 
minds in their youth, through all the time 
of Napoleon's dominion, and who were 
thrown into some degree of perplexity on 
the breaking in of the new time upon them, 
soon resumed their confidence in the good 
old faith which had so often been exposed 
to severe trials, and their hopes began again 
to revive. Moreover all sensible men, and 
consequently the great mass of the people 
in many parts of Germany, who had ob- 
tained through the Revolution many really 
useful and suitable institutions, were not 
in the slightest degree inclined to exchange 
them for fantastic images and hopes, or for 
those other heterogeneous, antiquated, and 

l 4 



152 GERMANY AND 

paralysed institutions with which they were 
threatened. 

Hence it happened, that the second party 
gained ground in the same proportion as 
the former was silenced by the barbarous 
stupidity that displayed itself more and 
more every day. The progress of the 
second party was favoured by the number 
of practical men who, despairing of the 
possibility of ever extracting any thing- 
good from the incurable disorder of Ger- 
many, — of ever gaining any thing beneficial 
from that still stagnant bog, overgrown with 
verdure, in which all the better part of 
former times lies buried under mud and 
putridity, now attached themselves to this 
party. Paris is now, therefore, once more 
on the point of becoming the capital of the 
liberal, as it lately was of the servile, world. 
As the courts of all countries formerly 
studied in that school, it now promises in 
like manner to become the school in which 
liberals are to acquire the lessons of free- 
dom; and as the eyes of the popular assem- 
blies in Smithfield are turned in that direc- 
tion, the institutions of Germany must also, 



THE REVOLUTION. 153 

it seems, be modelled after Gallic manners, 
peculiarities, and sentiments. 

We, it seems, must also obtain similar 
courts and chambers of peers, appearing 
like a fortified camp in the midst of an 
enemy's country. The courts of Germany, 
who, casting their eyes in all directions, to 
their despair, found themselves in a friend's 
country, from the abundant seeds of hatred 
sown by them, and their artificial system of 
finance, have truly paved the way for such 
a state of things. We therefore must, it 
seems, content ourselves with the same 
parliamentary comedy, and gain similar 
Houses of Commons, which rest on no 
other foundation than the coteries of a 
capital and journals, and, in the midst of a 
despotism, extending itself through every 
element of the state, are the sole repre- 
sentatives of freedom. Perpetually oscil- 
lating between insurrection and subjugation, 
they continue, without ending, to repeat 
the same tedious farce, in which the oppo- 
nents of ministers, who try to keep them- 
selves in equilibrium by all the arts of rope- 
dancing, endeavour to drive them from 
their places, to fall at last themselves by 



154 GERMANY AND 

the same arts which they practised against 
others. 

It is to be hoped, however, that the in- 
stitutions of France will, in time, acquire a 
greater degree of strength and stability. 

In that country important elements of 
public life have developed themselves, 
which ought to be held by us in esteem 
and honour, though belonging to a foreign 
nation, as we are now reconciled to it by 
peace. Above all there has arisen there a 
school, in which prudent, dexterous, and 
crafty statesmen are formed, who easily 
overreach and dupe the pale-visaged and 
timorous pupils of our sedentary and scrib- 
bling school. But with all this, little has 
yet been done for. the internal happiness of 
the people. In the people of Germany are 
to be found germs of a very different nature, 
which will unfold themselves in a much 
more fruitful manner, if we do not, in blind 
self-conceit, despise the good merely be- 
cause it is foreign, or in still more foolish 
self-forgetfulness, sacrifice what is valuable 
among ourselves to a ridiculous imitation 
of foreigners. 

As these party-views were accompanied 



THE REVOLUTION. 155 

rirst by ill-humour, then by discontent, and 
at last by the rage occasioned by the times ; 
as interests of the most opposite descrip- 
tions threw every thing into confusion, and 
the most intentional misrepresentations 
were associated with the usual sources of 
misunderstanding ; and as the suspicion 
which gradually gained possession of men's 
minds, poisoned and distorted every thing : 
then arose the dreadful perplexity of ideas 
characteristic of the present times, in which 
no man can understand another, and opi- 
nions run through all points of the com- 
pass, and blow from every region ; and in 
which, as in the building of the Tower of 
Babel, the labourer brings mortar instead 
of stones, and wood in place of bricks, and 
from the confusion of tongues, according to 
the old joke, sack is the only word common 
to all. 

Davoust, a foreigner, said in answer to a 
certain deputation, " There is no Germany 
now, I know only Prussia, Bavaria, Hano- 
ver, &c." The unity of the country has 
now become in like manner, folly in the 
eyes of one part of the nation, and high 
treason in the eyes of another. That it is 



156 GERMANY AND 

the province of the German to belong in 
beautiful universality to all nations, is the 
fashionable doctrine of the day. At once 
the Swiss, Jew, lackey, and prize-fighter of 
the whole world, he must never, if he would 
avoid punishment and severe reprehension, 
bestow a moment's attention on his country 
which he sees torn to rags; We may hang 
about our persons, all the baubles and 
gewgaws of other countries ; but when our 
youth lately endeavoured to restore the old 
fashion and dress peculiar to Germany, this 
was censured and held up to ridicule as the 
most extravagant madness. When a num- 
ber of German artists in Rome united them- 
selves fraternally into one society, and, in 
order that, by their honest efforts, they 
might extend the honour of their country, 
endeavoured to revive the good old Ger- 
man school, this was immediately construed 
into mysticism, revolutionary innovation, 
and a return to the darkness of the middle 
ages. The court, to which, in their vene- 
ration for the old imperial house, they 
exhibited their works, disowned them in 
presence of strangers, whose malice was 
thereby amply gratified, .and who made 



THE REVOLUTION. 157 

both parties the subject of their derision ; 
and in addition to this mortification, in all 
the German journals, they saw themselves 
abused by the zealots of protestantism and 
antique arts, and insulted by the counsels 
which were compassionately lavished on 
them. 

The cross on the battle-field of Leipsic 
has been thrown down, and the act, as was 
to be expected, has foun,d its defenders. 
As a new species of patriotism begins at 
every frontier, which it is to be hoped will 
soon be protected by special custom-house 
regulations, Saxony, of course, has an in- 
disputable right to a patriotism of her own. 
They keep Napoleon fast bound to the 
rock, lest the old blind Samson should 
escape, and seizing again the pillars of the 
rotten European political system, bury him- 
self under the ruins of the house on which 
Caphtorim and Philistines are seated. His 
institutions are still all of them in good 
preservation, his ideas held in high honour; 
his money only, with the addition of a little 
base alloy, has been recoined into small 
change. France guards with care the free- 
dom which she received from us, while we, 



158 GERMANY AND 

for our reward, have carried back with us 
her old servitude. 

What, at an earlier period, during the 
influence of our enthusiasm, was spoken 
and done by us, is now viewed as the ve- 
nial sins of our youth, which we blush to 
remember. Those, however, who wish to 
live in the ideas of that period, who obsti- 
nately refuse to reconcile themselves to the 
subsequent changes, are chained like so 
many lunatics, till it can be ascertained 
whether they are yet capable of acquiring 
the flexibility which has constantly carried 
the others with an unabashed front through 
all their shame. These others, however, 
who are now at the head of affairs with the 
same justice as when they corresponded 
with the enemy, and betrayed to him every 
re-action against the slavery of the country, 
were impudent enough at a later period to 
justify their conduct by citing the greatness 
of the times. 

In such a complete revolution within so 
short a period, the whole circle of ideas of 
the cautious Germans has necessarily been 
disturbed, displaced, and inverted. By one 
class every thing historical is viewed with 



THE REVOLUTION. 159 

superstitious reverence; with another, every 
defence of rights is a revolutionary abomi- 
nation. In such confusion all manner of 
opinions cross and succeed each other. No 
principle is firmly established ; no bond 
holds the checquered world of thought to- 
gether; there is nothing to connect the idea 
which was received yesterday, with the idea 
which will be received to-morrow. A short 
memory, becoming every day shorter, buries 
the past in happy oblivion. According to 
one party, the princes are all excellent 
throughout the whole German land, and 
every thing would be well were it not for a 
wicked nobility, the origin of all evil, who 
think of nothing but means and ends for 
re-erecting their dungeons to beset the 
highways as of old, and to restore club-law, 
[Fausi-recht*) though without arms, to wield 
the clubs. According to another party, a 
set of jacobins have sprung up in the 
empire, who are plotting a subterraneous 
revolution, and after cutting all the princely 
and noble throats, then intend to establish 
a republic one and indivisible. The various 
estates, no longer members of the same 
body, refuse to act with each other ; like 



160 GERMANY AND 

so many different nations they have taken 
the field against each other ; their mutual 
attacks are carried on with all the bitterness 
of rage. Every one, according to his pecu- 
liar views and interests, fashions his own 
world, and the constitution which he thinks 
suitable, but no common axis runs through 
the various contrarieties. Following the 
example set by those in higher stations, no 
man will consent to any sacrifice whatever ; 
and as all civil order is a giving and taking, 
and taking and giving, it is impossible that 
any such order can take place, where all 
wish to be takers, and there are no givers. 
In the midst of all this confusion the go- 
vernments are in a continual state of os- 
cillation, without counsel and without de- 
cision. The stars of heaven have veiled 
themselves in anger from their sight, the 
earthly compass is unsteady and deceitful, 
their policy is no longer in stead to them, 
and tradition has abandoned them. That 
which can help them inspires them with 
fear, that in which they place confidence 
breaks and falls to pieces, and remains 
powerless in their hands. The order of 
things to which they are attached, seems 



THE REVOLUTION. 161 

pedantry to the age, and whatever possesses 
energy and volition, appears, in their eyes, 
jacobinism. Those, who with calm dignity 
and justice ought to have separated the 
contending parties, have themselves joined 
the ranks of the combatants, and having 
taken a part in the conflict, in the heat of 
the battle they will be trodden under foot 
with the rest. 

It was natural that these dissensions of 
our distracted times should have a parti- 
cular influence on our youth. If a new 
creating and organising spirit is really to arise 
from the past decay, it must necessarily be 
born in the new generation sent to com-* 
mand the coming age. Let the departing 
generation, on consulting the still small 
voice of conscience, rejoice when it can in 
the review of its deeds ; let it weep over its 
errors, or labour with stupid obstinacy to 
defend its follies. The rising generation 
will advance with all the feelings of youth- 
ful energy on the stage of history. The ex- 
perience of the past ought not to be despised 
by it, but it may justly waive its claim to 
the inheritance of the errors and follies of 
former times. It ought, above all things, 

M 



162 



GERMANY AND 



to take a keen interest in all public affairs, 
that, by such a preparation, it may strengthen 
itself for the work which it is called on to 
complete. 

This summons our youth obeyed with 
honour, when they rushed forward to pro- 
tect our new-born freedom, and, like the 
Curetes and Corybantes, with armed dances 
and brazen sounds, to conceal the infant 
Jupiter from the lurking enemy. On re- 
turning from the field, the universities re- 
ceived many of them into their bosoms, and 
fed with the pure milk of discipline their 
spirit, because strong and powerful. It is 
an absurdity therefore to complain of this 
natural dev elopement ; in guiding it, the 
wisdom of the old will alone be shown. If 
you have conjured up good spirits, why are 
you afraid of them ? If they are bad whom 
you have summoned, then your mistake 
will only cost you your alarm ; for, if you 
yourselves are pure, Satan, with all his 
angels, can have no power over you ! 

It was necessary, therefore, above all 
things, to appear composed and collected 
in the presence of these youths. But, in- 
stead of this, you manifested fear, and 



THE REVOLUTION, 163 

thereby laid the foundation for much evil, 
both to yourselves and them. When the 
anniversary of the Reformation was cele- 
brated, beside the bones of Luther in Wit- 
tenberg, the spirit of the Reformer ascended 
the Wartburg, where some hundred youths, 
actuated by a kindred disposition to his 
own, had assembled to partake of this so- 
lemnity, — enraged that the same Reform- 
ation in head and members, which he pointed 
out to the church, should be approved of, 
while it was refused to the state, when it 
was required by the sentiments of the 
age, thereby preparing a second terrible 
judgment for Germany. The proceedings 
of that day, characterised in general by dig- 
nity and decency, have been laid before the 
world. It is known also, that in the even- 
ing, after the example of the reformer, the 
symbols of the old servitude, and a number 
of books, of which a very few may have 
been improperly selected, but of which by 
far the greatest number had long been con- 
demned and judged by the nation, were 
solemnly committed to the flames. 

This act might, one would think, have 
excited the wholesome reflection, that the 

m 2 



164 GERMANY AND 

same state of things, after a lapse of 
three centuries, had given birth to the same 
phenomenon. The errors which the ruling 
church then committed, might have been a 
warning lesson to those who now follow the 
same course. But it could do no good to 
break out into a blind fury against the 
symptom of this hidden disease ; nor was it 
suitable to enter into a contest with these 
youths with respect to an act which was 
only important from the consequences which 
It was wished to assign to it. Instead, how- 
ever, of calmly estimating the transaction 
according to its real import; instead of 
praising what was praise-worthy, and re- 
proving with something like pleasant irony 
what gave rise to dissatisfaction ; first- 
impressions, and the clamour of offended 
vanity, were allowed to carry the day ; the 
world was filled with complaints against the 
unheard-of and audacious crime; investi- 
gations and embassies were set on foot, 
which all ended in nothing, and first 
awaked in these young people the idea of 
their great importance, and, at the same 
time, betrayed in a moment the whole secret 
of the weakness of the other party. 






THE REVOLUTION. 165 

When the students, at the aspect of the 
dreadful condition in which the country had 
been placed by division, wished to banish this 
division from universities at least, and endea- 
voured to unite the provincial associations 
(Landsmannschafteri) into one general asso- 
ciation [Burschenschaft) : if the govern- 
ments wished to take any notice of this, 
they might, through the influence of those 
who possessed the confidence of the youths, 
have gradually contrived to manage matters 
so, that, as the provincial associations were 
equally founded in natural relations, they 
should not on that account be extirpated, 
but adopted into the unity, the diversity 
serving to excite the unity, and receiving 
tranquillisation in return from it. But it 
seemed as if the very idea of unity was 
odious. The becoming dignity, the moral 
worth, and the tranquillity to which the ge- 
neral union gave rise, seemed to be much 
more disliked than the contrary qualities 
which had hitherto characterised the pro- 
vincial associations. The provincial asso- 
ciations were therefore countenanced by the 
governments ; and thus it has happened, as 
an incurable separation took place between- 

m 3 



166 GERMANY AND 

them and the unitarians, that to the four 
sects now hostilely arrayed against each 
other, a fifth has been added, (especially as 
the harsh and clumsy manner in which the 
university of Gottingen * was treated, has 
scattered its provincial associations over all 
Germany,) and that our universities have 
become an image of the public confusion, in 
which unity, which ought to be in harmony 
with multiplicity, is now in conflict with it. 



* Gottingen and Heidelberg were the two German 
universities in which the provincial associations were not 
supplanted by a general association. But Gottingen 
clung with most tenacity to the old system. This may 
partly be accounted for from what M. Goerres has? 
said with respect to that university, and from the 
decided opposition of the Duke of Cambridge to the ge- 
neral associations. In former times, Germany was con- 
sidered an aggregate of four lands or leading provinces, 
namely, Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia, and 
the students at the universities were divided into asso- 
ciations (landsmannscJiqften), taking their names from 
these lands. The university of Glasgow would seem to 
have borrowed the division of its students into nations, as 
well as several other peculiarities, from Germany. It 
would, indeed, be difficult to account for the division of 
Scotland into the four nations, of the Clyde, Rothsay, 
Lothian, and Beyond the Forth, on any other principle 
than that of imitation. 



'THE REVOLUTION. 16*/ 

The youths who defended the system of 
unity, irritated at the opposition they ex- 
perienced, enraged at the general perse- 
cution which they had to encounter, and the 
lurking suspicion that watched all their 
steps, and even converted the public exer- 
cises of boys in the gymnasia (turn-platzen) * 
into an object of dread, they now betook 
themselves in some measure to secresy. As 
the condition of their country was the subject 
of their deliberations, and as, from the con- 
duct observed with respect to them by the 
governments, they conceived themselves 
called on to introduce as speedily as pos- 
sible a better order of things ; that spirit 
necessarily developed itself in secret in 
them, which, when it came to be publicly 
displayed on some recent occasions, seemed 



* In the north of Germany, plans of intellectual and 
moral improvement have been connected with public 
exercises. The universal diffusion of these exercises, to 
which has been given the name of turnen, (the German 
or Latin origin of which has been much disputed, thougli 
in all probability it is derived, as well as tournament, from 
the Latin tornare,) and the enthusiasm with which they 
were prosecuted, were attributed to the well-known 
Jahn. 

M 4 



16$ 



GERMANY AND 



wholly to deprive the governments of every 
thing like prudence or self-possession. 

The conflict of the times soon found its 
way to them, and they had therefore to 
choose their side. To the minds of youth, 
history appears in a subordinate light ; and 
with their own life their particular history 
may be said to begin. That internal sense 
which perceives the future in the past, is 
slightly developed in them, and their whole 
being may be said to be limited to a pre- 
sent existence, fresh, full, effervescent, and 
ungovernable, and which conceives that all 
that is to be is contained within itself. In 
the consciousness of so much fire and active 
power, they are not much inclined to stop 
short in their career, and to look around 
them to view the things which once were, 
and following therefore their natural im- 
pulse, they attach themselves in preference 
to that ideal party which endeavours to 
shape the world according to its own fancy, 
and, like the spider, is both the loom and 
the weaver of the web which is produced by 
itself. From their situation, the German 
youth considered themselves the represent- 
atives of their country, the chosen instru- 



THE REVOLUTION. 169 

ments for effecting, in the struggle with the 
degeneracy of the present day, the restor- 
ation to the better order of things which 
once existed, and for vindicating the honour 
of Germany against the attempts of other 
countries. Belonging in this endeavour to 
the historical party, and sharing in its per-; 
secution, they were thus placed in a state 
of opposition to themselves, which they 
conceived might be most easily and simply 
obviated by going a step further back in 
German history than was taken by the 
reformation in the church, and selecting 
that period in the life of the people which 
corresponded to the stage of existence they 
had themselves reached. 

That history was by all means to be 
honoured, was their opinion ; but then 
behind history lies a state of nature which 
yet belongs to it : and now that all the ties 
of society are rotten, that all the estates of 
the empire are destroyed by time, that the 
powers and the families of the ancient 
nobles have become gradually extinct, a 
similar condition of things is externally re- 
turned, and a new constitution, derived 
from the freshness of nature, ought to be 



170 GERMANY AND 

established. This was a return to the 
contrat-social, modified only according to 
German forms. And as, a few years before, 
our youth were occupied with philosophical 
constructions of the universe, the construct- 
ing powers were now exercised in the ar- 
rangement of social relations ; and after 
going through the various dimensions of 
the Constitution, their consideration was 
very naturally directed to the centering of 
$11 of them in a republic. 

In the mean time the course of events 
was such, that no incitement was wanting to 
their zeal, no fuel to their passions. Madam 
von Krudener *, fantastical and extravagant 
in her devotion, but well-meaning, affec- 
tionate, and humane in her conduct, had 
been calumniated by priests, insulted by the 
different polices, and at length conveyed by 
a succession of brigades of gens-d'armerie 
to the frontiers of Russia, merely because 



* The Emperor Alexander frequently visited Madam 
Krudener, when in France, and was supposed to be not 
a little influenced by her advice. A very curious account 
of Madam von Krudener, and of her intimacy with 
Alexander, was given in the Rhenish Mercury. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 171 

she not only prayed with the people, and 
announced the day of judgment to them, but 
also clothed the naked and fed the hungry. 
The Emperor Alexander then sentKotzebue 
among us, and if the slightest appearance 
of enthusiasm throws the cowardly age into 
agitation and trembling, this man, who on 
his very entrance into the world in early 
youth, began with a capital of depravity 
equal to that with which other men, by no 
means deficient in that respect, usually end 
their career, and who afterwards might be 
said to become the king of all the vulgar, as 
he was the abomination of all the well-dis- 
posed, — this man was just such a person 
as the age wished ; and, while censorships 
and tribunals watched every word which a 
regard for the welfare of Germany called 
forth against the pestiferous abuses of the 
age, he was allowed to set himself down in 
the midst of the land, and to deride with 
impunity whatever was dear and venerable 
in the eyes of the people. The intention 
of the emperor in sending him was in all 
probability innocent enough. He wished 
him no doubt to observe and explain the 
Various movements of this country, a matter 



172 GERMANY AND 



certainly difficult enough to understand. 
But having made the most unfortunate of 
all choices for this purpose, it was hardly 
possible that an unfavourable suspicion 
should not attach to the object of this mis- 
sion from the character of the person em- 
ployed in it. 

This suspicion received only too much 
confirmation, when Kotzebue, taking an 
unfair advantage of his commission, basely 
calumniated the most honourable men ; and 
when, on the discovery of this wickedness, 
the severity of the law was not directed 
against the calumniator, but, however in- 
credible it may seem, solely against the 
calumniated, merely because they had 
dragged the work of darkness to light. 
The irritation and rage became still 
stronger, when in the treatise of Stourd- 
za*, originating perhaps in no evil inten- 
tion, but avowed with the most shameless 



* A memorial against the German universities drawn 
up in the views of the Russian government, and sub- 
mitted to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, which may 
be considered as the groundwork of the late measures of 
the German diet with respect to those seminaries. 

Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 173 

audacity, as official at a later period, the 
language held, with respect to the Ger- 
mans and their institutions, was such as no 
people wiU willingly bear with from 
foreigners. The general disgust to which 
this treatise, and still more the visible im- 
pression produced by it on the higher 
regions, gave rise, — the rage at seeing the 
country, to which public opinion had long 
been in the habit of ascribing the annihi- 
lation of so many of our hopes and expect- 
ations, now taking such an unfair advantage 
of the weakness of Germany, and interfer- 
ing in so barefaced a manner with its most 
domestic concerns, could not fail to be in- 
tensely felt by our youth, whose liberties, 
the last miserable remains of the state of 
things which existed in earlier and better 
times, were now attacked with such crimi- 
nal audacity. Among such a number of 
ardent and susceptible young men, whose 
whole heart, and soul, and endeavours, 
were directed to our national affairs, it 
was hardly possible that a spark from 
the flames which had been so incautiously 
kindled, should not descend into the region 
of dark energies which surrounds the hu- 



174 GERMANY AND 

man breast, and spreading the conflagration, 
awake their sleeping powers from their 
repose ; that the rage and indignation, 
which had been excited, rising higher and 
higher every day, should not at last boil 
over. In Sand the mound was first broken 
through, and it was natural that he should 
be the first victim of the devouring flood 
who laboured with the greatest assiduity to 
undermine its barrier. The youth took 
it upon him to write out himself the com- 
mission for the deed, and to execute it with 
his own hand. When his measure was filled 
to the brim, and ready to flow over on his 
head, he whom he sought was delivered 
into his hands. He himself, however, gave 
his own life as a propitiation to the enraged 
Nemesis ; according to the ancient doc- 
trine, that blood demands blood. 

The deed struck the people like light- 
ning. Since the years of our rising, no- 
thing had taken place which they could 
comprehend ; but what had long remained 
unintelligible, and struggled for meaning, 
now found a language. A bloody deed had 
again become the point in which the 
thoughts of all were collected, and opinion 



THE REVOLUTION. 175 

was soon agreed respecting this event. 
Disapprobation of the act with approbation 
of the motives, a renovated feeling of the 
presence of eternal justice in all human 
things, a clear light thrown over the con- 
dition of the country, and a keen interest 
in public affairs, were the results of the 
general agitation which followed in a short 
space. Public opinion had passed a grand 
climacteric ; a profound seriousness came 
over the age, which, up to that period, had 
entered into public affairs with less ear- 
nestness. 

To this blow, which agitated men's minds 
so profoundly, another speedily followed, 
fearful and alarming from the very rapidity 
with which it succeeded. A young *man, 
to whom the Machiavelian system, in 
which his native province was entangled, 
had long been an abomination, possessed 
of a good-natured and composed but 
moody and close disposition, was also in- 
stigated by the bitter rage which burned 
within his bosom, to adopt the determin- 



Loehning. Trans, 



176 GERMANY AND 

ation of tearing asunder the net by an act 
of violence. He selected the President 
Ibell, whom he considered as the author of 
that sj^stem, for a sacrifice. But to obtain, 
by an overbearing energy, a tyranny over 
the multitude, who, by legal ways, may de- 
fend themselves from slavery, even though 
means of an unjustifiable nature may have 
been resorted to, is by no means a crime 
deserving of death. A people can only en- 
joy so much freedom as they know how to 
deserve ; and violent actions can never 
supply the deficiency of merit. This was 
the second error of the young man, in ad- 
dition to that which he shared with Sand ; 
and he atoned for both with his life. But 
the angel of death passed by the object of 
his attack. It darted, however, a furious 
look at him ; and it is to be hoped that 
this look was understood. May the dread- 
ful catastrophe tend to the welfare of his 
soul. 

Thus then the destiny with which they 
had so long amused themselves on the 
stage, advanced with terror into the midst 
of them, when the levity gave place to 
alarm, and a profound dread of its obscure 



THE REVOLUTION. 177 

power. Having renounced the God of 
Christians, the old Jehovah again descended; 
u a jealous God, a revenger, full of anger, 
and of great power, whose ways are in 
storms and tempests, before whom a de- 
vouring fire goeth forth, while darkness is 
under his feet, and who thunders with his 
thunder, and doeth great things, and yet 
is not known." The hour in which the 
first blood is shed in civil dissensions, and 
in which the first sacrifices fall, is a dread- 
ful and decisive hour. It is the hour that 
gives birth to a whole ominous futurity, 
which takes its shape from the influence of 
the good or evil stars, at that time predo- 
minant. It is still a sign, therefore, be- 
tokening happiness, and a pledge that 
Heaven is still merciful to Germany, that 
the signal was not in this, as in so many 
other cases, given by cold and naked atro- 
city ; but that an act of violence was exe- 
cuted in the error of the heart, by hands in 
other respects pure. The two-fold charac- 
ter of this act therefore leaves two ways 
still open for our choice, the way of light 
and the way of darkness. 

But this has occurred to very few of those 

N 



178 GERMANY ANB 

who have publicly spoken of die deed ; $m&- 
thus we have here a proof how much tfe& 
worldly prudence of the book- learned is 
below the sound sense of the people- That 
the deed was not Christian, has been de- 
cidedly pronounced by all our writers after 
Steffens ; but God sometimes stirs up a 
heathen virtue to punish that Christian 
hypocrisy, which, while it concludes witk 
levity the most unjust wars, wherein hun- 
dreds of thousands ofm^n perish, bethinks 
itself only of Christianity, when the flames* 
which it beheld with delight from afar, at 
length catch its own roo£y 

The actor has been reproached with pride 
and arrogance in having with his limited and 
feeble powers, taken upon him the work o£ 
God and the magistracy. This is the just and 
true point of view for themselves and others 
who may long to commit such a deed ; but 
to hold this language to the actor after the 
completion of his purpose, argues a dispo- 
sition by no means over-christian. What 
would those who prefer such an accusation 
be able to answer, were the young man fco 
defend himself in this way. " Thou speakeat 
of pride ; but take care test thou be not 



THE REVOLUTION. 179 

thyself possessed of spiritual pride, whep 
thou exclaimest, I thank thee, God, I am 
not like this man ! Thinkest thou that I 
determined lightly on this deed, the fearful 
responsibility of which 1 so well knew? 
Thinkest thou that God would so cruelly 
destroy, by a cold spiritual pride, a life 
hitherto led in purity and piety, so cruelly 
blind a spirit, in other respects enlightened, 
that it should no longer be able to with- 
stand the illusion of a vulgar vanity. 

M If thou knowest not the dark kingdom 
of the aby$s which nature has closed, happy 
wilt thou be if to thee it should ever re- 
main closed ! All its dark powers has the 
mind conquered, and inclosed within that 
abyss. But deep springs arise in the heart 
of man, and flow into its darkness. All the 
passions throng around the entrances, eager 
for a passage, but, closed and sealed by re- 
ligion and morality, they are held firmly 
down ; and so long as the command of the 
gates is retained, the life above is gay and 
cheerful ; but when crime, or the calamity 
of the times, has broken the seal, and burst 
open the gates to the kingdom below, then 
all manner of horrors ascend from the 

n 2 



180 GERMANY AND 

gulph ; like a whirlwind they burst from 
the abyss ; they seize their victim with 
demoniac force, and the will alone is no 
longer able to withstand the dreadful power 
by which it is assailed. Night and all the 
furies of life ascend through the gulph, self- 
murder and every bloody deed. They sent 
to me the spirit which the Roman saw in 
Asia and at Philippi, and he conquered not 
without a hard struggle* 

" But, who burst open the gates of the 
kingdom below ? Who let loose all the 
passions ? Who conjured up those furies ? 
Who first poisoned all the springs of public 
life with hatred and suspicion ? When the 
Romans took Edessa, the soldiers, as the 
old story informs us, plundering the tem- 
ple, and greedily digging for treasures be- 
low its foundations, at length tore up the 
stone consecrated by ancient Magi with 
sentences and holy rites, that sealed up the 
abyss in which contagion was enclosed. 
It spread itself immediately over the whole 
of the inhabited earth, and at once swept 
away the third part of the human race. 

" You speak of Christianity; but who first 
broke its power by making it a cloak for 



THE REVOLUTION. 181 

avarice, and every base and wicked passion? 
Who still crucifies the Lord in his temple, 
and casts dice for his garments ? With 
words I hear his doctrine frequently pro- 
fessed, but where are the works ? I see the 
justice-seat surrounded with people de- 
manding right and justice ; but where are 
the judges ? Hence the idle sword sprung 
of itself from the wall, and smote a guilty 
head. Therefore, and inasmuch as we are 
all sinners, judge your brother in mercy, 
that you also may be judged in mercy. Do 
what is enjoined you by divine and human 
laws, and then the abyss will close of itself, 
and I shall be the last victim whom it will 
devour." 

Events of such a serious and alarming 
character could not fail to attract the keen 
attention of the different governments. 
They are seated at the helm of state, that 
they may guide the vessel through every 
danger. But the more furiously the 
billows heave, and the more violently the 
surges foam, the more coolly and self-col- 
lectedly ought the pilot himself to remain. 
If he wishes to guard against real danger, 
he must not tremble with apprehension at 
n 3 



182 GERMANY ANtf 

the danger which is only imaginary ; the 
uncertainty which perplexes the ignorant 
ought to be a stranger to him. With a 
sharp eye and practised hand, he should 
make even the raging of the element obe- 
dient to his views, so that uncompliant and 
refractory powers may even be conducive 
to his object. The more a government 
contains of the nature of the primum mobile, 
the less it will be affected by the oscil- 
lations of that which is moved. Viewing 
things from an elevation, looking down on 
them from the firmament, as it were, the 
extent of the field of observation, and the 
manner in which objects are shaded by 
each other, cannot confound it. By seizing 
the heads of all the elements of society, it 
can easily direct their movements. 

There is an incorruptible conservative 
power in social unions. The same instinct 
which first led men to form them, watches 
incessantly over their preservation and 
existence, and no government is under 
the necessity of having recourse to wicked 
instruments to hunt out secret intrigues* 
If the government is any way deserving of 
regard, all the good will be in a sort of 



THE REVOLUTION. 183 

secret understanding with it, and will not 
■easily allow an atrocity which requires the 
concurrence of many for its execution, to 
remain in concealment. If government, 
therefore, wishes to command the great 
arid public movements of society, it ought 
not to dread hidden attacks, more espe- 
cially in Germany, nor to allow itself to 
deviate in the slightest manner from the 
course which wisdom recommends. A cool 
and steady attention will enable it to inter- 
fere with activity, when activity is necessary. 
It ought to watch the evil-disposed, till the 
disaffection breaks forth, in readiness to 
meet it, if possible ; or if it fails in this, to 
visit the overt act with severity. The 
English government is a model in this 
respect. The Germans have hardly a con- 
ception of the first elements of such a 
system j audi of this the late events which 
have taken place in Prussia, unfortunately 
afford a fresh proof. 

It would, seem, that eitherYroTn the in- 
fluence of locality, water, air, or some in- 
comprehensiblespiritual cause, the faculty of 
seeing- spectres has for years been endernical 
in Berlin. This disposition wa& formerly 

n 4 



184 GERMANY AND 

displayed in things of a more innocent 
nature, and gave rise to many a ludicrous 
incident. The government had long been 
disturbed by visionaries* to whom, how^ 
ever, after the history of the Wartburg 
transactions, less attention was paid. But 
enraged at the events of the late days of 
judgment, it had appointed a species of 
committee of safety, invested with the most 
ample inquisitorial powers, with a view to 
have some light thrown on these things. 
This committee, instead of coolly examin- 
ing the obvious facts, when this was pos- 
sible, and proceeding in the way of analysis 
to connect these facts together, and to form 
with them, and such secret particulars as 
should come to their knowledge, a skilful 
and consistent tissue of proofs, and thus 
rising, by gradual induction, from effect 
to cause, through a whole series to the first 
cause, if there were auy such ; preferred to 
this drudgery, so unworthy of their genius, 
the method of synthesis ; and having 
assumed the subject of their search as an 
undeniable fact at the outset, and laid it 
down for themselves and trje world as a 
dogma, or, at least, a postulate of pure 
2 



THE REVOLUTION. 185 

reason *, when they precipitated them- 
selves from it by a salto ?nortale, to an 
enquiry into the nature of the reality. 

Hence the existence of a grand exten- 
sive treasonable conspiracy, a crime de- 
serving of death in every country ; the 
centre of all the movements of the age, 
which had displayed themselves peripheri- 
cally in these two acts of violence, was 
proclaimed to wondering Europe ; and 
when, in order to connect the centre with 
the circumference, by means of proofs in 
the shape of fragments of writings, agents 
of the police were sent to all parts of Ger- 
many, in the certain expectation that ex- 
perience would necessarily confirm the 
positions derived from absolute contem- 
plation. But experience was very refractory 
with respect to the constructive metaphy- 
sics of the high transcendental police ; at 
least all that has yet come to the know- 
ledge of the world, is altogether insufficient 
to fill up the yawning gulph. 

A constitution, originating in a debating 



* Pure reason, a term in the philosophy of Kant. 
Trans. 



186 GERMANY AND 

society, of which a young man publicly 
avowed himself the author, which, if printed, 
would not perhaps have found a hundred 
readers, and in which, moreover, there can 
be nothing deserving of punishment, except 
an attempt should be made to introduce it 
by force ; a small collection of Jacobinical 
sentences and metaphors, for which Goethe 
and Novalis are partly responsible, and 
which might easily receive a twenty-fold 
augmentation from the tragedians of all 
nations ; the expressions, as taken down by 
a student, of a man *", against whom no 
other charge can be brought than that in 
speaking he has never, perhaps, been suf- 
ficiently guarded, and that, in giving free 
scope to his eloquent tongue, he has always 
laid himself but too open to the designs of 
crafty villainy ; a few daggers, of which 
one, worn in the period of the German 
costume, and inscribed Ornament of the 
citizen, an inscription which pious zeal 
construed into an exhortation, to ornament 
the citizen by murderous weapons; a few 



* Professor Jahn, Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 187 

fragments of letters obtained by search, in 
which young people poured out their hearts 
to each other, in all probability but too 
ioften filled with the most bitter indigna- 
tion : — such was the miserable result, to 
obtain which so many acts of violence had 
been resorted to. Unable to comprehend 
how deeds such as those of Sand and 
Loehning could possibly be the fruit of 
solitary meditation, taking counsel only 
from itself, it was assumed as an incontro- 
vertible position, that these deeds were the 
work of certain associations. Searching 
then for the heads and first founders of 
these associations, every man at all dis- 
tinguished for his sentiments, became the 
object of suspicion ; they were not aware 
that, with youth more especially, every man 
cowardly enough to endeavour to excite 
others to the commission of an act of 
violence, without taking any part in it 
himself, would for ever forfeit their honour- 
able regard and confidence. 

Thus public characters, honoured with 
the esteem of the nation, no part of whose 
conduct ever afforded the least ground for 
suspicion and against whom there was not 



188 GEftMANY AND 

even the slightest charge, were treated in 
the most insulting manner. Commissions 
were dispatched to examine their papers, 
on the ground of their being suspected 
of participating in criminal conspiracies. 
These commissioners, after heedlessly dis- 
regarding all judicial forms, and thereby 
enabling the world to decide as to the 
degree of deliberation with which they acted, 
burst with violence into houses, and then set 
on foot an inquisition into all papers, with- 
out exception, down to those relating to the 
most private family affairs ; to perfect the 
character of which nothing was wanting, 
but a dissection of the living body, to dis- 
cover the thoughts still remaining in embryo 
in their secret recesses. Young people, 
whose blood burns within them, to speak 
in the language of Shakspeare, were treated 
like cold-blooded criminals, and inquiries 
were instituted into sentiments, which had 
never escaped from the sanctuary of the 
breast, and into words uttered years before, 
which had never received any effect ; and 
when all these proceedings led to no dis- 
covery, a most unheard-of maxim was 
resorted to, by way of excuse, namely, that 



THE REVOLUTION. 189 

it was not conceived the searching for 
objects of suspicion, rendered those persons 
suspected who were searched ; a doctrine 
which would deliver over the most inno- 
cent men a prey to every abuse of arbitrary 
power, whenever it might feel inclined to 
seek for thieves, where no thieves ever 
were harboured, j 

That part of the conduct of the Spanish 
inquisition, which has always been most 
bitterly inveighed against, is the striking 
its victims without naming their crime. 
What shall we say of a proceeding, in 
which the existence of a crime being first 
laid down hypothetically, in order to dis- 
cover the perpetrators, every honourable 
man is arbitrarily accused of it ; and accord- 
ing to which, if we could really suppose 
any thing serious in contemplation, the 
prince himself, in consequence of what he 
did, what he proclaimed, and what he pro- 
mised in 1813 and 1814, must be con- 
demned as the first demagogue of the 
land ? But this mode of proceeding has 
already severely revenged itself on the 
actors. The world, after all these charges 
of conspiracy, persists in demanding the 



190 GERMANY AND 

proofs, which are no where to be found., 
All Europe, which has been called in ta 
witness the deed, and to which traitors 
have been promised, waits to receive the 
guilty sinners, and they cannot be deli- 
vered. Truly, it must be confessed, if Prus- 
sia, since the war of liberation, has ever 
begun to conduct herself again with undue 
arrogance, her destiny has forced her to 
atone for it, by a most cruel humiliation. 
Perhaps all the most reputable men of 
that country will at length deem it neces- 
sary to unite for the purpose of rescuing a 
government, of which the good intentions 
manifested in so many other things cer- 
tainly merited a better fate, from the danger 
to which it has exposed itself by such 
hallucinations, and in availing themselves 
of all the legal means at their command, in 
order to fix some limits to the madness of 
certain men, who, if, as they say, there are 
five degrees in the conspiracy, namely, 
those who belong to the gymnastic socie- 
ties, students, those who wear daggers, 
leaders, and persons unknown ; are them- 
selves the very unknown persons of whom 
they are in search. Like the worthy citizen 
in the story, they have set fire to the house 



THE REVOLUTION. 191 

to destroy the mice, and though with ail 
these acts of violence, they have been un- 
able to make the slightest discovery, their 
suspicions are not, on this account, in the 
least weakened, being fully convinced that 
their labours have only been unsuccessful, 
because they did not go to work with the 
utmost degree of prudence, and that they 
have been so unfortunate in their search, as 
not to stumble on the proper persons* 

The people of Germany, who have been 
attentive observers of all these proceedings, 
were struck with one thing more particu- 
larly, namely, that while in all good and 
beneficial measures, which require any thing 
like a common co-operation, years pass 
away without producing the slightest 
result ; on this occasion, a few days only 
were requisite to institute a general chace 
after conspirators, from Holstein to Frey- 
burg. 

These transactions could not fail to pro- 
duce the most unfavourable influence on 
the disposition of the nation, In the 
violent irritation which prevailed, such an 
inconceivable blunder as this, was all that 
was wanting to complete the general dia- 



192 GERMANY AND 

gust felt by all men who had the honour 
of their country at heart, and to increase 
the discontent, hatred, contempt, distrust, 
and all the bad passions, that had only 
found too much nourishment in preceding 
events, to such a degree, that a problem, 
which four years ago might have been 
solved with the utmost ease, namely, the 
settlement of our public affairs, threatens 
now to set the utmost efforts of human 
strength at defiance. The ministers who 
met under these circumstances at Carlsbad, 
were called on to point out a remedy, 
where a remedy could not easily be found ; 
and now for the first time, circumstances 
urgently demanded from the diplomatists, 
who had hitherto acted entirely on the 
negative principle, the adoption of positive 
measures, for which there is no prepara- 
tion. Austria, in particular, seemed to 
call for this assembly with the greatest zeal. 
She thought it advisable to withdraw her- 
self from the restless empire, for the sake 
of peace and quiet ; but an intimate con- 
nection of so long standing cannot be 
shaken off on such advantageous terms ; 
the gain cannot be all on one side, and 



THE REVOLUTION. 19,3 

accordingly, after sacrificing all her popu- 
larity in this attempt, she is now at last 
seized with the most alarming appre- 
nensions. 

History sits incessantly in judgment; the 
French have been punished, and other 
nations in their turn have to answer for their 
sins, which they must atone for with fear 
and tribulation. 

As the whole system was founded on a 
calculation that nothing would take place, 
now that something has actually taken 
place, and that we are threatened with still 
more from the future, the most distressing 
embarrassment has succeeded. A machine 
was invented, which has indeed proved 
itself admirably adapted for exciting all 
manner of hopes from its mere unwieldi- 
ness ; but in the moment of alarm, when 
it ought to serve some purpose, it mali- 
ciously refuses to perform any sort of 
service whatever. No endeavour was ever 
made to bind even the slightest contrariety. 
Every species of dissonance has been 
allowed to increase, till it can no longer be 
cured. Nothing that pressed forward has 
ever been refused admission ; all things 

o 



194 GERMANY AND 

have been confounded together ; and those 
which, from their nature, are the most 
opposed to each other, have been super- 
ficially reconciled; and, when enraged nature 
has at last revolted against a confusion, at 
the sight of which the head becomes giddy, 
they have deprived themselves of every 
means of resorting to any measure calcu- 
lated to restore tranquillity. Every thing 
like intellect is neutralized by folly ; every 
force is destroyed by an opposing force ; 
every movement is impeded by a counter 
movement, so that all exertion must 
necessarily end in useless deliberations. 

If attaching themselves in appearance to 
the historical party, they should interpret 
the 13th article to mean only the restora- 
tion of the former corporate estates, in all 
the imperfection of latter times,suchan inter- 
ruption is altogether at variance with what 
has already been done in the way of con- 
stitution, or which it is still intended to do. 
The corporations in question have by 
degrees become extinct, and the historical 
party is by no means to be gained over at 
so cheap a rate ; their sense is not to be 
sought for in the ossification of the last age, 



THE REVOLUTION. 195 

nor will they lend themselves as a screen 
for arbitrary power in disguise. 

A resolution may, no doubt, be adopted 
of deciding authoritatively with respect to 
the relations which first came into discus- 
sion in the chambers of Baden, and render- 
ing the decrees of the diet obligatory on 
the chambers, without any concurrence on 
the part of the estates ; but then, as every 
thing like a constitution would become a 
mere mockery, such a proceeding must 
necessarily give rise to a conflict between 
power and the nature of things, which, as 
the latter always turns out the strongest in 
the long run, cannot fail to terminate at last 
in its favour. If it should be wished to 
invest the diet w T ith an executive power, the 
affections of the nation are withdrawn from 
this institution, which it has been accus- 
tomed to view in the light only of a pro- 
visional tribunal ; and besides, it has not the 
slightest longing for the shadow of an 
emperor without a chamber. The powerful 
have allowed the favourable moment to 
escape them, and the opportunity which 
they neglected to seize, is now at the com- 
mand of others. 

o 2 



196 GERMANY AND 

What avails all the arts of diplomacy 
against the mighty natural power which 
disengages itself every day more and more 
in the nations ? The first source of a stream 
may be struck by a horse's hoof out of the 
earth, but no human power will afterwards 
be able to restrain it in its course. The 
chambers even will come off victorious in 
the struggle for their right of influencing 
the decrees of the diet ; they will consti- 
tute collectively the second chamber, and 
when once their powers are understood 
and admitted, it will become necessary, as 
a matter of course, in order to strengthen 
the collective executive power, to give a 
head to it in its concentration. This is the 
natural order of things, the progress of 
history, against which all the arbitrary 
power of man will be found unavailing, 
which no congress can arrest. The nation 
is impelled towards unity, and this impulse 
is like the growing of a tree, or the blow- 
ing of the wind ; no effort can stop it in its 
progress. The means on which the depo- 
sitaries of power may determine to further 
this work, will operate directly to further 
it -, those which they adopt with the view 



THE REVOLUTION. 197 

of impeding it, will indirectly conduce in 
their opposition to promote the same end, 
as they will serve to arm with additional 
strength the power to which they are op- 
posed. 

From the diplomatic art, which from the 
nature of things rests only on itself, there 
is no salvation to be expected for Germany, 
and hope and fear are, in this respect, 
equally vain. The lightning of heaven has 
scathed the German oak ; its top has be- 
come dry and withered ; the root only, 
which it has struck in the earth, and the 
ample trunk, still continue green and 
strong, and vigorous at heart, and must 
send forth new shoots. The power of 
nature, which once impelled upwards that 
luxuriant tree, in whose branches the birds 
of the air found a refuge, having attained 
the extremity of its range, and the vertical 
point of its curve, remained first stationary, 
and then changed its course, falling back 
within itself, and in its remission towards 
its source collecting its powers in all direc- 
tions, in order that, renovated thereby, and 
re-invigorated like the boiling fountains of 
the northern island, it might again elevate 

o 3 



198 GERMANY AND 

its branches towards heaven. Herlce the 
whole history of Germany, for more than 
three hundred years, has been one continued 
withering, and one continued drying up; 
hence all our institutions stretch forth only 
naked and dead branches into society ; 
hence all has become formal, rotten, in- 
jured by the elements and decayed ; hence 
a spirit of corruption pervades our political 
edifice ; as in old ruins we hear a gentle 
cracking in its walls and foundations, as if 
the tooth of time were perceptibly gnawing 
its structure ; we hear the piles on which 
it rests giving way, the stones toppling 
down, the walls starting, which only indeed 
continue to stand from their being held 
together by the green Ivy that has wound 
itself around them. The mass, however, 
from some mysterious connection it still 
retains with the primitive rock from which 
it was hewn, and, continuing to exist with 
it uncorruptibly in a common natural life, 
in the course of thousands of years has not 
yet become grey, still remains sound at 
heart, and is susceptible of a new con- 
figuration. 



THE REVOLUTION. 199 

In old times, when states reached this 
point, Providence made choice of the irrup- 
tions of nations as a means for effecting her 
purposes. By opening up springs from 
beneath, and pouring floods of barbarians 
over the dry and withered surface, the 
stagnant life was refreshed by the new 
blood which was infused into it ; and the 
dry and faded was again clothed with a 
new verdure. But these fountains no longer 
flow with the same abundance since culti- 
vation rooted out the primaeval forests, and 
the plough-share has tamed the wild earth 
to a subjection to man. The same culti- 
vation, however, has opened a communica- 
tion with another world, which, by its 
mental energies, replaces the natural power 3 
whose sources are drying up, and dis- 
charges its functions in the transformation 
of states, namely, that mysterious world of 
ideas, which, filling according to ancient 
doctrine, the infinite space of the kingdom 
of spirits, and like the ethereal heaven ex- 
tended above our self-consciousness, pours 
down its light through all the clefts and 
corners of the lower world, and gives ani- 
mation to all bodies and shapes. As, accord- 

o 4 



200 GERMAN* AKft 

ing to the same doctrine* souls descend 
from that world to animal matter, lead a 
life in time here below, and then return to 
their eternal home ; in like manner, the 
ideas which proceed from it, hold states 
together as being the peculiar emanation 
of their spiritual nature, bind and connect 
them in themselves by mental attraction, 
and thoroughly illume them with mental 
light ; and thus bound in the just proportion 
through matter, and invisible in themselves, 
having, through matter, obtained a visible 
representation, promoting life as the inhe- 
rent plastic and conservative power, they 
lose themselves in that medium by which 
they are represented. When, however, the 
course of this life has been run through, 
and the State has become old, it can no 
longer contain the inherent idea ; that idea, 
which was before latent in it, becomes now 
disengaged and radiating ; and, in propor- 
tion as it feels an affinity to the spiritual 
kingdom above alluded to, and attracts and 
draws down other kindred ideas to itself, 
it becomes more and more estranged from 
the existing materials ; and thus the idea 
which was before conservative, becomes 



TME REVOLUTION. 201 

ilow destructive, and having determined to 
construct for itself a new edifice, bursts 
asunder all the bands of the old organi- 
zation, to obtain space for the existence of 
the new. 

And thus it happens, that in these times 
of transition, the mental lightning flashes 
throughout society which it convulses, and, 
in an instant, all heads are set on fire as if 
influenced by a general contagion. The 
manner in which the kindling thought 
spreads itself, whether by inhalation through 
a common and all-connecting medium, by 
language or by usage, or by some secret 
sympathy, cannot be known. All men, 
however, have become suddenly of one 
mind, and the flame spreads only the more 
rapidly the more endeavours are made to 
oppose it. This is caused by the mental 
spirit of the social union having disengaged 
itself. Freed now from its bonds the dis- 
embodied spirit of the social union roams 
about, and, like the cloven tongues of fire 
which appeared unto the apostles, descends 
on the heads of the organs of the age, and 
there dissolved in dazzling light, penetrates 
through the avenues of the senses into all 



202 GERMANY AND 

minds, to consecrate them for the newly 
begun work. Hence, of all follies, that of 
interrupting this great work of creation, and 
endeavouring to arrest the course of ideas, 
is the most unpardonable. No one ever 
yet conquered who engaged in this bold 
conflict. Let them proceed quietly with 
their task, and let us favour their move- 
ment, by dexterously endeavouring to aid 
it ; and then unfolding themselves tran- 
quilly, and proceeding by gradual meta- 
morphoses, they will effect the new con- 
figuration and rejuvenescence. Stripping 
off only what has become useless and dead, 
they will then peaceably settle in the new 
structure. If, however, instead of imitating 
the practice adopted in the culture of bees, 
and by suitable and sonorous sounds afford- 
ing only measure and harmony to their 
operation, they are clumsily disturbed and 
confounded ; then the various instincts be- 
come furious and enraged, and a terrible 
tumult arises in the hive; a dreadful war 
of all the passions commences ; every im- 
pulse is powerfully directed to violence and 
universal revolution, and a voice goes forth 
through all lands : let the sword of ideas 



THE REVOLUTION. 203 

fall on the head of all who presume to 
oppose them. 

To us, therefore, whom the course of the 
times has brought to such a point of transi- 
tion, there are two ways open to our choice; 
either to enter into arrangement with the 
ideas in the peaceable manner above de- 
scribed, and allow them to settle without 
molestation in the midst of us ; or to allow 
ourselves to be forcibly overcome by them, 
and placed by a Revolution completely at 
their mercy. It is impossible not to see, 
that hitherto the course of things strongly 
tends to the latter alternative ; that the 
witches' cauldron, in which it is forcibly 
attempted to boil this age young again, is 
filled with the poisons of all kingdoms and 
with all sorts of wicked magical herbs, and 
that by means of a brisk fire it is constantly 
kept boiling and foaming over till the wished 
for hour of midnight has struck. The 
parties have for some time reached the 
proper symptom, for they are resolved no 
longer to understand each other. 

All the things which singly have been 
considered as the cause of insurrections 
and revolutions ; namely, grinding taxes 



204 GERMANY ANt) 

and duties, violent changes of laws and 
customs, the violation of rights and privi- 
leges, general oppression, the promotion of 
unworthy persons to public places ; an op- 
pressive want and decline of trade, the 
abuse of standing armies, and factions 
driven to despair, — have we contrived to 
crowd together in the present day ; and no 
ordinary industry has been displayed in 
producing the present rare unanimity of 
discontent. Love and confidence have 
disappeared, and the whole system rests 
now solely on the instinct of obedience, 
which is deeply rooted in the human 
heart. But this also will at length be 
got over, for incessant complaints which 
never find a judge, and edicts wholly at 
variance with reason, summon men but too 
frequently to lawful resistance, which soon 
prepares the way for unlawful resistance, 
and for every species of self-assistance. 

This bold game having now been carried 
on for a length of time, the thought of the 
possibility of a revolution has suddenly 
seized us. This idea has been received by 
both sides in a manner equally unbecom- 
ing ; by the one with mental alarm, and by 

12 



THE REVOLUTION. 205 

the other in some degree with criminal 
levity. Revolutions are like death, at 
which cowards only tremble, but with 
which frivolity only would think of sport- 
ing. These catastrophes in history are of 
such fearful importance, and of such a 
serious and awful nature, that none but 
mad or desperate men would think of 
wishing for them. A revolution can only 
be the work of passions. Hence religion, 
morals, intellect, science, and experience, 
are all obstacles in its way. As nature in 
the most violent ^stages of fever, compas- 
sionately wraps the mind in delirium, that 
by its inspection it may not disturb the 
vital powers in their operations at that 
critical period ; in like manner, in such a 
paroxysm, a people must be seized with 
madness before the disease can actually 
come to a powerful crisis. Hence at first 
it is found the easiest thing in the world to 
make the weak give way to greater talents, 
and all then wears a most promising 
appearance ; for an unusual feeling of life, 
and a warm enthusiasm, find little difficulty 
in carrying through good and proper mea- 
sures, and the first parties comprehend in 



206 GERMANY AND 

them the great majority of the well dis- 
posed. But when the axis, which holds to- 
gether all the elements of the social union is 
broken, and every separate element follows 
its own law of gravity, the supremacy of 
what is mental, which is essentially mea- 
sured and regulated, can no longer exist, 
and being under the necessity of gradually 
following the pathetic powers, the animal 
parts of man assert their right, and obtain 
the mastery in a time which essentially be- 
longs to the dominion of physical power. 
Hence every following Jparty must neces- 
sarily go beyond the preceding in every 
species of exaggeration ; every one which 
succeeds in impelling an affair one step 
nearer to the extreme point, will of neces- 
sity precipitate and destroy the more mo- 
derate ; the Protesters and Resolutioners, 
as in England, will be followed by Millen- 
arians, who acknowledge no government ; 
these again will be followed by the Level- 
lers, who insist on an equality of property ; 
and at last the Antinomians, who reject 
even the ethical duties as a tyranny ; as in 
France Girondists, Jacobins, Cordeliers, 
drove out each other, by turns ; and as in 



THE REVOLUTION. 207 

the Netherlands, the Gueux were succeeded 
by*: the Image Breakers ; the madness of the 
former stage always appears cold indif- 
ference in the eyes of a succeeding one ; 
till at length, step by step, the whole ladder 
of human atrocity is climbed, every thing 
existing precipitated, every thing solid 
dashed to pieces, every thing exalted razed, 
and every possession has changed its 
owner. 

When Nature has exhausted herself in 
this manner in anarchical fury, the domi- 
nion of unity again succeeds as a necessary 
reaction. By this dominion the exhausted 
powers are at first easily constrained, but 
as the violent agitations of the preceding 
period have excited great contrarieties, and 
the most violent centrifugal directions, it 
becomes necessary to grasp the mass with 
more and more firmness. From one step 
to another, the highest degree of despotism 
is at length reached, when another opposite 
course of atrocity is run through, which 
terminates in some external or internal 
catastrophe. The circle being then com- 
pleted, the extremities are again directed 
towards the centre. This is the march 



208 GERMANY AND 

which the English, the French, and every 
other revolution has taken. A German 
revolution would form no exception to this 
order of nature, as what a colder blood 
might perhaps mitigate, may be easily coun- 
terbalanced by spiritual beverages, as was 
demonstrated in the war of the Boors. In 
addition to the ideas, from whose agitation 
France underwent a complete change, we 
have one peculiar to ourselves, the influence 
of which was hardly felt in that country ; 
namely, that of unity, and such an increase 
of the fermenting matter must necessarily 
give rise to a stronger fermentation. A 
German revolution would inevitably end 
with the expulsion of all the ruling dynas- 
ties, with the destruction of all ecclesiastical 
forms, with the extirpation of the nobility, 
with the introduction of a republican con- 
stitution. When it found its more fortu- 
nate Wallenstein, as every revolutionised 
people are necessarily a conquering people, 
it would then burst its frontiers and over- 
throw the whole of the rotten political fa- 
bric of Europe to the borders of Asia. But 
all this splendour, like that of the Nether- 
lands at an earlier period, would be pur- 



THE REVOLUTION. 209 

chased with the blood of .many millions, 
with the destruction of half the rising gene- 
ration, with the annihilation of the whole of 
the property of Germany, and with the 
devastation of all her provinces by a long 
war; and after all little more would be 
gained than may be obtained in a much 
cheaper way. 

Prospects of such a nature cannot possess 
any attraction either for governments or 
people, or even for foreign countries which 
might be tempted to take advantage of the 
disturbances ; and therefore all parties, if 
they listen only to reason, would prefer 
adopting the first of these courses. But 
things are not so ordered that any party 
may first try every other course, and in- 
dulge in every species of abuse ; and then 
at last, when matters come to an extremity, 
may still have it in their power to adopt 
the wiser and better course. So long as 
the passions are yet under controul ; so 
long as the wild spirits are still chained 
down, the voice of reason will be listened 
to, and the gradual transformation may be 
happily effected. But when events have 
once reached the brink of the steep preci- 



210 GERMANY AND 

pice, then all appeal is vain, all discourse is 
fruitless. It is as if we should attempt to 
reason with earthquakes and tempests. No 
one then stops to ask after consequences. 
The kindling spark runs along like a train, 
so long as it comes in contact with any 
thing inflammable, and blow follows blow, 
in proportion as the powers are let loose ; 
and how quickly the fire spreads when the 
tinder is once prepared for it in men's 
minds, even without any concert or con- 
nection, has been exemplified in the risings 
against the Jews. Hence the more hollow r 
the sounds which are heard along the 
deep, indicative of the approaching storm ; 
the more loudly the mass is heard to rave, 
the greater the giddiness which has taken 
possession of the governments, and the 
more violent the agitation of the dark bil- 
lows by which they are surrounded ; the 
more urgent it is for the different parties to 
come at least to an understanding in one 
point; namely, to transform the vortical 
and fermenting movement into a flowing 
one, by which the danger which threatens 
to burst through all otir dikes and mounds, 
may be turned aside, 



THE REVOJX'TION, 211 

As the whole mass of the conflicting 
parties, from what has been stated, may be 
in the first place considered to form two 
leading divisions, of which the one is chiefly 
anxious to support that which exists on a 
historical foundation, while the other advo- 
cates independent substitutes for our pre- 
sent defective institutions, we should begin 
with an endeavour to reconcile this contra- 
riety, the success of which supposes an 
equal honesty in each party, and which 
therefore could only be attempted with the 
better description of those on both sides. 
Supposing both parties to be sincerely ac- 
tuated by the desire of mutual correction 
of views and opinions, an enquiry, con- 
ducted on such a principle, would soon 
show, that if justice were done to each 
party, the dispute would terminate of itself! 
It would be easy to convince both, that the 
various epochs and ages in the life of a 
people, in their succession, belong as ne- 
cessarily and inseparably to each other, as 
the various institutions and peculiarities 
which subsist together in the same age. 
The latter form the immanent state, the 
former together form the permanent state. 

p 2 



212 GERMANY AND 

Hence, as duties and rights are reciprocal, 
with the rights to which every succeed- 
ing age succeeded by inheritance, duties 
founded also at an earlier period must be 
associated. It would further be ascertained, 
that as every age has been endowed with 
nearly an equal measure of creative powers, 
though differently distributed in different 
ages, — as an earlier age cannot transmit to 
a later more than it possessed itself, — the 
creations are therefore to be estimated 
according to the measure of the powers 
employed on them. If later ages stand on 
a broader empirical foundation, an earlier 
age may in return have the superiority in 
every thing higher and ideal. 

If we are but enabled to ascertain the 
nature of every species of activity by its 
fruits, then history will soon teach us with 
what fulness the period of the middle ages 
developed itself, and most of all in Ger- 
many; that from the same onyx stone, on 
which the Church was founded, the Gothic- 
Bvzantine imperial fortress, another Mont- 
Salvaz, was hewn out and built around its 
minster; that all its institutions were framed 
with an intelligence, the deep sense of 



THE REVOLUTION. 213 

which is obvious to the most superficial 
consideration, while the most profound 
cannot fathom it; and formed a union of 
powers harmoniously co-operating with 
each other, in one sound, energetic, and 
flourishing political body ; that in the im- 
perial laws a system of legislation was com- 
menced of which no other people had even 
an idea; that its manners, its public and 
private life, its views and ways of thinking 
were consistent and connected ; that in 
every species of art and poetry it can be 
exceeded by no other age ; that even in its 
scholasticism, which has been treated with 
so much contempt, in the animated Gym- 
nastics exhibited in its combats of philo- 
sophers and poets, before the eyes of a 
nation viewing them with lively interest, a 
mental acuteness, dexterity, and a power 
of discrimination were acquired far beyond 
any thing of which we are capable ; that in 
all its proceedings, in short, in the fulness 
of its youthful creative energy, an anima- 
tion and activity were displayed, of which 
we have scarcely even a conception: all 
this we know from history, and the ruins 

p 3 



214 GERMANY AND 

which have come down to our times, bear 
loud testimony to the truth of it. 

But if our age, in one of those fits of 
self-conceit with which it is frequently 
seized, should hold a discourse, in presence 
of the past, respecting its foundation, it 
would be placed in a very difficult situation 
if this mandate were issued : " Tell us what 
thou hast completed, and expose to us what 
thou hast formed and constructed, that we 
may award to thee the honour to which 
thou art entitled, and the praise which thou 
hast merited!" And if its poverty were 
then to be displayed before this severe 
judge, and the theatrical wardrobe of its 
virtues examined by its sharp and pene- 
trating eye, the following condemnatory 
sentence would probably be pronounced: — 

" Behold, thou hast, with an eloquent 
tongue, related thy deeds, and praised thy 
glory ; and we have examined its quality, 
and seen that all is founded on vanity and 
nothingness. In no one thing have we 
perceived any traces of a real creative power 
in thee; the fountain of all truly formative 
impulses is dried up in thee ; the still and 



THE REVOLUTION. € 215 

collected fervour which tends to preserve, 
thou hast renounced ; hi return, a devour- 
ing flame has entered into thee ; thy whole 
being is destructive, and thy strength con- 
sists only in pulling down. 

" I built for thee a Church, the found- 
ations of which are encircled by the 
waters of the earth, while the clouds of 
heaven enveloped its towers ; so firmly 
founded in itself, that though the ground 
yielded under it, the structure remained 
nevertheless unshaken for many centuries : 
but thou cast the fire-brand into it, under 
the pretext of separating from it all that 
was earthly and inflammable, and now the 
naked walls alone remain ; the vaults have 
been driven in by the rains of heaven, the 
naked arches remain uncovered, grass and 
shrubs grow in the sanctuary, and birds 
nestle in the columns. 

" Thy Germany have I girt round with a 
mural crown, as with strong armour; its 
knights defended the old fortifications; 
within all was life and animation ; but thou 
hast broken open the gates, blown up the 
towers with the force of powder, levelled 
the walls to the ground, and employed the 

p 4 



216 GERMANY AND 

materials for domestic purposes ; so that 
the empire has become like an open village, 
guarded by custom-house officers ; the 
embroidered imperial mantle, which em- 
braced the whole, has been cut in pieces by 
the feudatories ; and having decked them- 
selves with the rags, they strutted about 
with them like so many negro kings, in the 
foreign state which they had purchased 
with the liberties of their subjects. 

" With the savings of centuries, I richly 
endowed the church and state, to give them 
an organ on earth, that they might thereby 
obtain earthly consistency. The military 
estate, the communes, and even the incor- 
porated companies, I also rendered inde- 
pendent. But all , these immense posses- 
sions thou hast scattered to the winds in a 
few years : ideas having been separated 
from their real bases, now roam about like 
spirits and unessential shadows in society, 
driven about by the wind of opinion, to a 
dependency on which they have been re- 
duced ; and for all this thou hast not, in 
the whole extent of the empire, founded 
one monument calculated to descend to 
posterity. 






THE REVOLUTION. 217 

" Thy presumption thou hast carried into 
the region of faith, and, measuring divine 
things by a human standard, thou hast 
drawn them down to the earth. The 
simple uncoloured ray of truth has, in the 
disturbed medium, been broken down into 
many colours, and rendered opaque; and 
what was once united, has rapidly separated 
into parties the most implacable towards 
each other. 

" All the sciences, forgetful of their 
celestial origin, hast 'thou seduced through 
sensual charms, till, forgetful of their source, 
they have degraded themselves to unessential 
shadows in the world of appearances, — like 
the spirits of nature, the Gnomes, Sala- 
manders, Sylphs, which are said to lead 
only a mortal life, without an immortal 
soul ; and thus thy intellectual operations 
have become a coarse and sensual pleasure, 
and an artificial game with the atoms of 
the world of elements, and a masked dance 
of higher powers, shrouded in animal dis- 
guises or lower gradations. 

" Thou hast separated the arts from their 
sacred destination, and made them the in- 
struments of thy pleasure: without sub- 



£18 



GERMANY AND 



stance, depth, and signification, they have 
become children of the world, tributary to its 
empty, light-minded, and frivolous desires ; 
and though music has occasionally soared 
again to higher things, the tinkling cymbals 
of folly, and the voluptuous dance, have been 
introduced into the temple of the Lord. 

" Thy diplomacy is in theory and practice 
an absolute nothing, pursued through all 
the categories ; a substitution of grimaces 
to the skill and dexterity which history 
demands. Thy art of government is idle 
scribbling, which has long been a stranger 
to every thing like nature, and separated 
from all tradition and experience; and which 
lives only in artificial abstractions. It runs 
after the shadows of empty theories, and 
from this artificial and imaginary world 
grasps from time to time at realities, which 
it only serves to confound. 

" Thy politics have only been displayed 
in destroying: the great discoveries of which 
thou boastest in the affairs of the Common- 
wealth, are, in my eyes, no great matter ; 
thy freedom and equality form only that 
relation of the elements of society towards 
each other with which every constitution 









THE INVOLUTION. 219 

has begun ; and are the play of chemical 
powers, which are alone efficacious in the 
lowest stage of the life of States. This 
anxious separation of powers, while estates, 
orders, and every thing truly organised by 
the impulse of nature, are run together in 
one mass ; these two Chambers, in which 
the whole freedom of the nation has ob- 
tained a domestic settlement ; all these 
seem to be but a poor reparation for the 
mischief which thou hast done. When I 
look at thy freedom, I see merely an eman- 
cipated slave which still bears the marks of 
his chains, and therefore perpetually oscil- 
lates between abjectness and liberty ; when 
I consider thy force, I see only a powerless 
mannerly despotism, indistinctly divided 
between arbitrary power and liberality ; 
when I look at the whole history of thy 
public life, I see nothing but a nauseous 
struggling between a timid self-will and a 
dreadful licentiousness, a mutual fearing 
and inspiring with fear, a fermenting move- 
ment without any result ; a dishonourable 
veiling, covering, and lieing; a cloaking 
over and deceiving ; a contesting without 
strength and dignity. 



220 GERMANY AND 

" Hence all thy proceedings are founded 
on mere phrases ; and a tacit agreement, to 
deceive and be deceived, extending to the 
lowest occupations of life, is what thou hast 
extolled to us as thy worldly prudence. In 
destroying and forming plans alone, thou 
hast an undoubted right to carry away the 
palm from every other age." 

Thus might the enraged past shame, 
with ease, that self-conceit which refuses to 
acknowledge its folly, and the presumption 
certainly deserves such a censure. Still, 
however, what irritation has here sharply 
and cuttingly urged, will admit of an 
answer, and, with a proper self-knowledge, 
and a calm and tranquil view of things, it 
would not be difficult for the subject of this 
heavy accusation to conduct its defence in 
this manner : — 

" Thou hast indeed built a strong house 
for God and the Empire ; but even hills, 
which nature has erected on the eternal 
foundations of the earth, have been thrown 
down and dashed to fragments, when the 
internal conservative life has been destroyed 
by age ; and thou, also, must have founded 



THE REVOLUTION. 221 

thy new work on the destruction of a flou- 
rishing part in a still more early antiquity. 

"Am I to blame that every thing on earth 
has its times and climacterics ? And that 
States, when their phoenix-period is run 
through, are impelled to consume their 
earthly part in the devouring flames, for a 
new regeneration ? 

" The dome of thy church towered up in- 
deed to heaven ; but the stones with which 
thou constructedst the work, are not dead 
masses, but free independent natures, 
which easily resign their will to the idea : 
— Is it my fault that they endeavour to 
regain their unpledged liberty, and that the 
foundations are now moving, and the ele- 
ments hastening to unite in new shapes ? 

" Thou madest, indeed, Germany strong ; 
but the power of gunpowder has burst the 
Cyclops' walls ; and the invention of the 
monk was only the symbol of the dreadful 
mental power which began to develope 
itself nearly about the same time. 

" Thy constitutions, resting on sensible 
ideas, on calm and fixed possession as their 
organ, have been swept away by a flood of 



222 



GERMANY AND 



gold from a distant part of the world; the 
attack of money, which, moveable, fleeting, 
and unsteady as thought, has operated a 
transmutation in the old sinewy and athletic 
body, and introduced a plethora into the 
relaxed vessels, by which their activity was 
but too soon destroyed. — Could I prevent 
that which, when the time comes, is eter- 
nally repeated in the case of every man ? 

" When the upper extremity became 
dead, what remained still fresh in the orga- 
nisation, must, according to the eternal laws 
of nature, have either absorbed what was 
dead, or expelled it, in proportion as it grew 
withered, or was abandoned by the inherent 
spirit. Thus the idea of the Emperor ter- 
minated before the external representation 
disappeared. Thus the Church, in its most 
spiritual organs, first became withered, and 
the spirit of the feudal system became 
altogether extinct. When the possessors 
quitted the stage, the property of course 
devolved to the survivors. The third Es- 
tate has obtained possession of the greatest 
part of it, and the endowment of what of 
ideas still lives, or will of new obtain life, 
is a charge on the produce. 



THE REVOLUTION. 223 

" Spirits are winged : God has created 
them free ; and they can, at their own risk, 
attempt whatever they please. Could I 
prevent them from at last using their right; 
and taking their flight from the secure, the 
safe, and warm nest of the mother ? Is not 
reason, like every other possession, a gift of 
God ? and is it an atrocity when it makes 
trial of its innate power ? 

" It is an error to suppose that faith only 
moves in a higher light, but that reason, a 
fallen spirit from pride, rules in darkness ; 
pride is merely a temporal ruin. When 
pride broke into the church, the church 
became torpid in the re-action ; reason, how- 
ever, when, self-renouncing, it follows with 
honest endeavour and purity of spirit the 
innate impulse of freedom to the end, will 
then find itself at the place from which it 
set out, and faith and knowledge will, when 
correctly estimated, prove themselves the 
same. The dividing into parties is in the 
way to this end, and is the necessary con- 
sequence of every exercise of freedom. It 
is only when stone and steel come into 
collision, that the intellectual spark is 
elicited. 



224 GERMANY AND 

" No doubt all knowledge has become 
more comprehensible and sensible. The 
course of ages, descending from height to 
depth, necessarily produces this. The in- 
ferior organs of the State, the third Estate, 
having become flourishing, knowledge has 
in consequence adapted itself to this order, 
and become more practical, blunt, and 
vigorous. Sciences have become tributary 
to necessities, and arts to recreation. But 
behold the structure which my mind has 
been erecting for three centuries, planned 
like a farm-house ; though Satan has con- 
veyed many a stone for this building, it 
will, notwithstanding, be at last a house of 
God. 

"Freedom is indeed still young, and knows 
not how to conduct itself; arbitrary power 
having, however, become grey and feeble 
from age, cannot reconcile itself to the hard 
choice between being and not to be. The 
old is not yet past, and the new has not yet 
become young. The mass is still raw, and 
flowing with difficulty, it will not yet admit 
of a pure cast. Hence all is merely a hissing 
and a conflicting, a shaping and a melting 
down, a forming and destroying, and I must 



. THE REVOLUTION. 295 

perpetually watch that the fire may not go 
down, and the boiling may go on quickly. 

" Hence my whole being is one continued 
contradiction. When attraction and im- 
pulse deserted the internal powers, the old 
chaos in society returned, and I, a terrible 
destroyer, followed the old Creator. But, 
from death alone can come life ; and the 
forming power of the world, when in the 
cup of Hermes the elements were first 
mixed, and when raving, fermenting, hiss- 
ing, thundering, the powers displayed them- 
selves in wild confusion, made many an un- 
successful attempt at creation, which are 
now inclosed within the hills, before the 
correct proportion was hit in the configur- 
ation of the work. Do not, therefore, 
demand from me the formation of any 
thing permanent at a single effort. Thou 
may est interrogate futurity respecting my 
work." 

If the former reproach was calculated to 
cast down an overweening arrogance, this 
defence again may preserve us from an ex- 
cessive humility, and it will then be easy 
to find the correct middle course, where the 
past, which was once a present, is allowed 

Q 



226 GERMANY AND 

its rights, that the present, which will, in 
turn, be as a past to the coming times, is 
not even entitled to give up. For history 
consists of ages, and whoever denies an age, 
must deny all that preceded. In all ages, 
that which wishes to remain separate is 
destroyed. Every thing general, every thing 
which acts efficaciously and in the manner 
of interest in the mass, ought as such to be 
honoured and esteemed. Whoever would 
exclude this agreeably to the principles of a 
false theory, may be certain that he is pro- 
ceeding in the ways of error. 

The first relation in which the opposition 
of times and views is practically evinced, 
and which demands the above mediation, 
is that of the state to the church. . Accord- 
ing to the idea of antiquity, the church in 
the great community of the faithful, repre- 
senting what was ideal, and the European 
republic in the empire, and the State in par- 
ticular, represented what was real. Such is 
the relation, however, of the two spheres to 
each other, that the ideal in its nature is free, 
reposing on itself, master of itself, and trans- 
parent to itself, and lighted up by the ideas, 
which, like stars in their effusions of light, 



THE REVOLUTION. 227 

reciprocally irradiate each other. The ideal 
again, from its nature, though surrounded 
by the former like the earth by the firma- 
ment, is, however, complete within itself, 
and within its peculiar sphere of activity, 
moves according to the definite laws of a 
natural necessity in a perpetual circle, and, 
in so far as it is subject to that necessity, it 
is deprived of freedom, and bound to its 
particular laws. Hence the one is certainly 
a symbol of the other, and the ideal precedes 
the real, as being the first in dignity. But? 
in so far as the idea, in its naturul side, is ac- 
tually incorporated in the medium by which 
it is represented, in so far it has left the 
province of the ideal, and the latter must 
now consign it to the natural laws of the 
real sphere. 

Thus the superiority of the ethical over 
the pathetical is by no means doubtful, and 
the ethical in its province recognises in no 
manner the dominion of the passions, and 
the dark side of man ; but it at the same 
time renounces the exercise of any direct 
dominion in the province of the passions 
themselves. It can at most through the 
law of the beautiful descend so far, and 

Q2 



228 GERMANY AND 

can only take on itself to order and regulate, 
as far as possible, the breakings out of the 
impulses of nature. Hence the Church is 
in rank the first, though not prevailing 
with exclusive rule. The State, however, 
in its more narrow province, determined 
by a multiplicity of earthly relations, pos- 
sesses its particular independent autonomy, 
which the Church can consecrate, but can- 
not itself claim. 

When the spirits of the deep ascend 
with audacity, when, like Ahrimann in the 
Persian mythology, they ascend to the 
ether, and veil and combat its stars, then 
what is threatened properly asserts its 
higher dignity, and forcibly precipitates 
the struggling enemy into the deep. This 
happened when, in the time of Henry the 
Fourth, the irrational Hyle* revolted 
against the order of the world. The great 
man j* was then sent whom recent times 
in their blind folly have so severely abused, 



* Hyle, *TA>j, a Greek word used by philosophers to 
signify elementary matter, i. e. the first shapeless matter 
from which the elements are derived. Trans. 

f Pope Clement VII. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 229 

because with his lightning he cast down 
rising audacity, and preserved the free- 
dom of the Church. In the violent struggle, 
however, according to the usual course of 
things, the other extreme took place, and 
the Church, arrogant from her victory, 
overflowed on her part her banks, and, in 
many things, arrogated to the succeeding 
Popes a supremacy in the temporal matters 
which came within the circle of its effi- 
ciency. This deviation again from the 
only correct and harmonious consonance, 
could not fail to excite another re-action, 
which attained its complete developement 
in the Reformation. 

Since that period a political sect has 
arisen, which affirms the Church is com- 
prehended in the State, and as the State 
cannot tolerate any equal, it must neces- 
sarily have dominion over the Church. 
Such a doctrine as this, which places 
necessity above freedom ; which consigns 
what is mental to a thraldom under what 
is earthly, a thraldom Christianity freed 
itself from in the contest with ancient 
Paganism ; which chains down thought, 
that ought, on the contrary, to give signa- 
Q 3 



& 230 GERMANY AND 

ture and name to all that is sensible, in the 
fetters of matter ! — such a doctrine, though 
quite suitable to the spirit of this age, is 
yet in itself so humiliating and revolting, 
that this will surely become the critical 
point, when this spirit, which has now 
reached its extremity, will be constrained 
to cede the field to higher and more worthy 
views. A church which should be obliged 
to pay court to the German sovereigns, 
which, following in their steps, should 
divide itself into as many factions as the 
Commonwealth is at present divided into ; 
which should degrade itself so far as to 
yield up the power over consciences to the 
humours, whims, common-place notions, 
and frivolities of courtiers ; which should 
yield up its doctrine a prey to the wind 
of theories, to be blown about in every 
direction, would soon become the most 
contemptible of all institutions, as there 
would not even be a Diet to give an appear- 
ance of connection to the loose members. 

If, therefore, in former times, the cham- 
pions of freedom clung to the State when 
the object was to combat the real Napo- 
leonism of the popes, in the present 



THE REVOLUTIONS 231 

disgraceful oppression of the Church its 
freedom and independence should be de- 
fended against the encroachments of secular 
power, and the idea should be saved from 
the bonds by which an usurping power has 
held it chained down. In the Catholic 
Church, therefore, we ought at present to 
reject every principle of subordination, and 
to allow only of that of the co-ordination of 
the temporal power with the spiritual ; and 
the declinatory movement by which co- 
ordination has been transformed into sub- 
ordination, must be compelled to retrograde 
till it reaches the point of equilibrium, when 
the relations can then be fixed. In the re- 
ciprocal relations of both, a perfect equality 
of rights can only be admitted. The prin- 
ciple of Christian morality ought to be 
obligatory in this as well as in other cases, 
" As ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye also to them likewise ;" as has been 
very ably and practically demonstrated by 
the Canon of Droste, in his publication on 
the subject of Church and State. 

To reach this point, however, the Church 
must attach itself more strongly than ever 
to its unity, and present to arbitrary power 
Q 4 



%3 £ 2 GERMANY ANB 

the close and firm phalanx of her hierarchy, 
against which it has more than once spent 
itself in vain. When it has in this manner 
obtained light and freedom, and the just 
endowment which the State still with- 
holds from it, it will then, from the im- 
mense power of reproduction which be- 
longs to it, soon perfect itself in a manner 
suitable to the age, and regulate itself by 
synods and councils ; and in proportion as 
ideas acquire new life, it will again exist in 
all the strength of youth. Then will be 
the time for making head against any 
species of despotism which may possibly 
develope itself in the Church ; for Catholic 
Germany feels as little inclination to sub- 
mit to an ecclesiastical as to a political 
despotism. 

The Protestant Church, however, which 
cannot retrograde in this sense without 
renouncing its character, has no other 
course left for it, but to terminate the Re- 
formation in the direction in which it began, 
and to carry it to such an extent, that this 
power shall every where be vested in the 
congregation, as Sommer has admirably 
pointed out in his book " On the Church 



THE REVOLUTION. 283 

in the present Age." The same relation 
in the way of universality, which the Ca- 
tholics must seek in the way of unity, would 
then be restored. Ecclesiastical power 
would then be connected with the ideal 
side of each individual member of the 
Church, and from the internal division in 
human nature would be sufficiently sepa- 
rated from the real power of the State, of 
which the focus is by no means the same 
as that of the Church. All other divergent 
directions, either originating in preconceived 
opinions, partial views, or a prejudiced 
way of thinking, and called forth by any 
particular interest, or even by ill-judged 
good intentions, from their very confusion 
and nothingness in themselves, would enter 
into collision with each other, and cannot 
therefore be adopted by history, which 
merely acknowledges what floats down the 
main current of each of her movements. 

These considerations lead us to the 
second great opposition, the foundation of 
another division in this age ; that, namely, 
which exists between the monarchical and 
democratical principle ; and with respect to 
which the great object is to ascertain and 



234 GERMANY AND 

determine the relation of the government 
to the people. Antiquity, guided in all its 
operations and creations by a correct natural 
instinct, (unconsciously for the most part,) 
formed and regulated a community of living 
organic individuals, according to the laws, 
and in the forms of organic life ; so that 
the power of formation, advancing from 
the individual to the community, repro- 
duced in it merely the type of individual 
organisation. We have here two sorts of laws, 
as it were, and two sorts of operations, and 
the same number of systems ; namely, the 
automatous and the arbitrary. The former, 
in which the beating of the heart, every 
pulsation, and, in short, every movement 
of the inferior life is carried on, has in 
itself its separate rights and its peculiar 
order; it has its peculiar inherent soul, 
which divides its formative and conserva- 
tive instincts among many independent or- 
gans, and has its separate and independent 
train of thought and connection of ideas ; 
but which, however, are subject in it, as in 
a dream, to the laws of an universal natural 
necessity. The second, however, namely, 
the arbitrary, in which all the arbitrary 



THE REVOLUTION. 235 

movements of the higher organisation are 
comprehended, is also subject to a higher 
mental supremacy; but instead of the 
former obscure instinct, a self-conscious 
contemplation, and a free self-determining 
volition, here regulates and determines all 
the different operations ; consequently the 
movements do not take place in a circle 
previously marked out; they are merely 
mediately connected with external natural 
relations ; these relations are therefore un- 
conditionally subject to that higher arbi- 
trary, which commands them in such a 
way, that the whole are accessible to it, 
even in the most minute details. Both 
systems, connected by leading intermediate 
organs, reciprocally strengthening and ani- 
mating, preserving and giving exercise to, 
nourishing and inspiring each other, form 
a complete and free whole within them- 
selves, which appears to us as the highest 
work of art of the creation. 

The former, however, as we have shown, 
will have more of the nature of the real in 
itself, and consequently will properly be 
the prevailing element of the state; the 
second, however, standing nearer to the 



236 GERMANY AND 

ideal, will appear the new ecclesiastical ele- 
ment. In the Church itself, the former 
will contain more of the Protestant, the 
latter more of the Catholic character; but 
in the State, the one will represent the de- 
mocratical, the other the monarchical prin- 
ciple. Democracy, from its nature, wilfully 
strives to depend solely on itself; it wishes 
to determine for itself as much as possible, 
and shuns every power that would assume 
a right of ordering and deciding from above 
according to general abstractions ; it is 
therefore essentially dividing and dissect- 
ing; resolving what is general into the 
most minute parts, till individual person- 
ality, as last element of the commune, sets 
bounds to the division. Hence authority 
is nothing to it, and its own conviction 
alone the only criterion of action; the 
community has merely a power delegated 
from below ; unity is merely derived from 
an unanimous multiplicity, and without this 
has in itself no ideal existence, and no 
power. The monarchical principle is es- 
sentially renunciation and self-deprivation ; 
it ascends synthetically, by a train of ab- 
stractions, to the highest power, and con- 



THE REVOLUTION. 237 

siders, descending again from thence, every 
thing subordinate as effluence of that unity 
which comprehends every thing within 
itself. Therefore the separate part here 
can maintain no existence in itself; it loses 
itself voluntarily in that whole, from which 
all the parts have emanated, and which 
holds them in a constant community; so 
that every one may exist in another, and 
every part which happens to be the organ 
of the whole may receive all its power. 
Hence the essential character of the mo- 
narchical, is belief in and obedience to that 
one universality, which has proceeded from 
the renunciation of every thing particular, 
and which has united the different ages 
historically, in one general living tradition. 
Hence, as every youthful state must first 
develope its mental qualities, and take root 
in the sphere of nature, in the constitutions 
of antiquity, (more particularly in those of 
the Greeks,) and also in those of such 
parts of the new world as have attained 
independence, the democratic element 
predominates ; and in the church the 
polytheism of paganism may be compared 
with the dissenting sectarianism. The 



238 GERMANY AND 

Greek constitutions were, in all their ele- 
ments, as family, commune, state, tho- 
roughly automatous, and the indispensable 
monarchical ingredient was added in an 
aristocracy, in itself, again, a more restricted 
Demos. 

All these democracies were therefore 
founded in and preserved by an instinct for 
the most part acting without conscious- 
ness. The emigrating tribes moved along 
like storks, according to the natural impulse 
of birds of passage. Those who settled, 
built themselves habitations like beavers 
beside the waters, and sent forth colonies 
like bees. In the interior of the society 
every thing was regulated according to 
periods of nature, and according to cycles. 
Ascending and descending forces of nature 
were represented in the different powers. 
The divisions of the country were formed 
according to natural divisions; every where 
great types of nature were discernible. 
Even custom ruled like a physical force, 
and the bond of the state was a union of 
repellingand attracting contrarieties. Rome, 
internally constituted according to the same 
principle, bore externally the monarchical 



THE REVOLUTION. 239 

character, though still in the sense of an- 
tiquity, with respect to its great dominion. 
The provinces were essentially in a state of 
subjection ; and Rome comprehended what 
was arbitrary in all nations within its own, 
as its Jupiter Capitolinus ruled over all the 
gods of a conquered world. 

AVhen the Germans, issuing from their 
woods, stormed the bulwarks of this em- 
pire, they also adopted in their state of 
nature more and more of the mental unity 
of the monarchical principle, which has 
now received, through Christianity, its found- 
ation in a higher world, and from thence 
received its consecration and delegation. 
When, therefore, the sword of the Franks 
had given unity and security to the whole 
of the west, Charlemagne founded the first 
empire in the spirit of the new Christian 
times. He himself, the first Prince by the 
grace of God, and the choice of the people, 
capitulated with the freedom of his Franks, 
and the other tribes subjected to him by 
their arms ; and possessing great, noble- 
minded, and liberal, though at the same 
time intelligent views as to what the altered 
situation of the world demanded, honour- 



240 GERMANY AND 

ing the principle of the old Germanic free- 
dom, and promoting every species of deve- 
lopement emanating from the people, he 
dexterously connected his sovereignty with 
the Christian-monarchical principle, which 
descended through a whole series of im- 
perial office-bearers, who in war and peace 
received their powers only from the highest 
authority, and thus formed the first truly 
organical state, comprising within itself the 
whole man in all his physical and mental 
regions. 

When, in the following age, the unity 
which had perhaps been too rigidly ex- 
ercised by him in his long wars, weakened 
by various relations, lost somewhat of its 
all-penetrating energy, then the automatous 
principle, gaining always more and more 
room, ascended higher and higher towards 
the centre, and binding the multiplicity in 
an exponential series of unities constantly 
super-ordinate to it, till the last lost itself 
in the imperial power, the whole political 
body was formed in a gradation of organs 
declining in such a manner in dignity and 
importance, that the lower always appeared 
as the root of the higher. Thus the im- 



THE REVOLUTION. 241 

perial officers, uniting with the democracy 
of the possessors of land in an armed aris- 
tocracy, formed the whole feudal system of 
the middle ages in its seven powers, and 
with its seven shields. The Emperor, as the 
highest unity, bore the first shield ; the 
Bishops and Prelates, who were Princes, 
bore the second ; the Lay Princes the third, 
the Barons and free Vassals were distributed 
under the fourth and fifth, and then the 
order descended through the * Ministeriales 
of the sixth shield, at last to those who 
were not bondsmen, and without being 
noble, could boast of a pure birth and a 
free possession, and who ranked under the 
seventh. Thus all the possessors having, 
as it were, resigned on their entrance into 
the State their personal freedom, as well as 
their Estates in favour of the community, 
in order to receive it again, secured and 
guarantied by that community, they formed 

* Dienstmannen in the original. They were a de- 
scription of Vassals who held their fiefs on the condition 
of performing court services, in contradistinction to 
Vassals, properly so called, who were bound to perform 
military services. They are called Ministeriales in the 
Latin of the middle ages. Trans. 



242 GERMANY ANP 

themselves in this seven-fold divided mass 
into a well-defended fortress of shields, for 
mutual service and mutual protection ; and 
in the middle ages, all who had not a home, 
all who did not belong to these divisions, 
all who were reduced to subjection by force 
of arms, were considered as doomed to 
predial slavery, and condemned to a mild 
servitude. 

In this sort of mixture of the two prin- 
ciples, Germany, in the middle ages, ran 
through its second brilliant period, and was 
elevated to the rank of Head of Christen^ 
dom. But, in the progress of time, that 
democratic principle from which the whole 
organisation emanated, spreading always 
wider and wider, could not fail to destroy 
its own work. After Germany was no 
longer ruled by the powerful Emperors of 
the Swabian dynasty, while their dignity 
remained elective, that of the office-bearers 
of the Empire became hereditary, and the 
law of the strongest {Faustrecht) gained 
ground more and more eyery day. The 
unity of the Empire was soon lost in multi- 
plicity. The second, and more especially 
the third shield, could not fail to acquire 



THE REVOLUTION. 243 

more and more strength, as they possessed 
most unity. This increase of strength, 
however, took place at the expense of the 
Imperial power, which they undermined, 
and at the expense of the inferior vassals 
at the same time, whom they partly op- 
pressed and partly gained over to their in- 
terests by corruption. 

The territorial sovereignty was thus 
gradually developing itself, when the inven- 
tion of gunpowder, rendering the military 
assistance of the feudal vassals less neces- 
sary, converted them either into courtiers 
or regular soldiers. The discovery of Ame- 
rica having poured streams of gold into 
society, gave rise to a system of taxation 
which soon rendered the territorial rulers 
independent of the aid of the landed pro- 
prietors. The breaking out of the Reform- 
ation gave the finishing blow to the whole, 
as it reduced the Church also to a com- 
plete state of subjection. Thus the Em- 
pire became the prey of a multitude of 
petty and more powerful tyrants, who toler- 
ated only the appearance of a Judge and 
Supreme Head over them, but in their 

r 2 



244 GERMANY AND 

constant progress downwards buried and 
overpowered the democratic principle. 

In order to effect this the better, the Cen- 
tralisation-system, as it is called, was de- 
vised. Under this system the State drew 
every thing down to the most minute 
object under its management ; the most 
trifling matter was managed from the cen- 
tre ; the police, as it is called, from its ele- 
vation, extended its discipline through all 
the members of the community, interfering 
even with the most private family con- 
cerns ; and the Church itself was subjected 
to the degradation of becoming an instru- 
ment of this policy. But injured nature 
took a severe revenge of those who made 
choice of such an absurd system. These 
centralised operations required to be con- 
ducted by natures of a more exalted descrip- 
tion than are to be found in the common 
run of men, and for the most part devolved 
on impotent instruments, who, as might be 
expected, were in vigour and knowledge 
below mediocrity ; while from below, 
where all autonomy became more and 
more paralysed, isolated power could derive 
neither aid nor encouragement. 

*5 



THE REVOLUTION. 245 

Thus, in proportion to the insatiable 
gluttony with which it devoured every 
thing that came in its way, in the same 
proportion it became feeble and impotent. 
When the machine happened to get out of 
order in any respect, the feeble spring on 
which the motion of the whole depended, 
was less able to encounter resistance, and 
to overcome the friction. 

As all manner of instincts were every 
day rendered more inefficacious and blunt- 
ed, and the impulses of nature less power- 
ful, the whole economy of the state became 
an artificial work of the understanding, 
without life and without nature. When the 
possession of land gave way to money, and 
money to paper, all organical vital power 
became a piece of mere mechanism, oper- 
ating within a particular circle, which had 
little or nothing to do with the actual 
world. In this manner states might be 
compared to animals in those physiologi- 
cal experiments in which their brains have 
been taken out, and the cranium filled with 
a mixture of zinc and quicksilver, when, 
on the application of galvanic stimulants 

r 3 



246 



GERMANY AND 



they rise, run about, leap, and exhibit 
altogether a dreadful resemblance of life. 

While this system was in its full career 
of advancement, a re-action was forming 
itself in secret. This proceeded from the 
sixth and seventh shields, which were borne 
by the Ministeriales, and those who were 
not bondsmen, and were the children of 
lawful marriage, of whom the Saxon Mir- 
ror P says, " as it is not known where the 
seventh world will end, so it is not known 
whether they can have fiefs or not," — but 
who, when their time came, began in turn 
to rise and advance in growth. Under the 
protection of this shield, the freemen as- 
sembled in the towns, in their different in- 
corporated companies, and in the Hanse- 
associations these communities united 
themselves again in corporations of a higher 
order. At length an independent order of 
peasants was established by the Revolution 
of Switzerland. The influx of money in- 
creased the number of independent proprie- 



* The old laws of Saxony exist under the title of 
Saxon-Mirror, ( ' SacJisen-Sjpiegel. ) Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 247 

tors,and soon broughtthegreatest partof the 
landed property into the hands of the free 
Commons. Service in the standing armies 
gave them the honour of arms; Printing, 
the knowledge and science, which before 
had been monopolised by the higher or- 
ders ; and the Reformation soon added the 
freedom of belief. 

Thus the democratic element, in all its 
purity, grew up in silence, in the same pro- 
portion as the monarchical, grasping exten- 
sively at every thing around it, weakened 
and destroyed itself intensively* Disre- 
garding the liberties of the Estates, the 
only remaining obstacle in its way, the mo- 
narchical element seemed to be on the 
point of swallowing up the democratical, 
when the violent re-actions which neces- 
sarily resulted from this course, gave a re- 
trograde direction to the whole movement. 
In this way the Revolution in England, and 
the Revolt of the United Provinces, took 
place. In our times, the French Revolu- 
tion gave to the democratic element in 
Germany the highest degree of tension, at 
the very time when the territorial system 
had, from the complete dissolution of the 
r 4 



248 GERMANY AND 

Empire, attained its utmost perfection ; 
and as the most extensive and most com- 
plete contrarieties are here ranged in oppo- 
sition to each other, we may conceive the 
urgent necessity of some endeavour to har- 
monise them, if we would avoid those vio- 
lent explosions which have broken out 
elsewhere. 

If we were to compare the present 
internal condition of Germany, with any 
peculiarity in organic life, we should find 
in magnetic somnambulism, a most ad- 
mirable coincidence with it. In this con- 
dition, the whole of the higher mental life 
has descended into the inferior animal life, 
and all independent volition has become 
extinct ; the various movements no longer 
listen to the command of those higher 
powers above, but receive from below the 
direction of sleep-walking ; all the senses 
are closed, and centered in themselves, 
and the mind sports in unreal visions, as 
in a glimmering reflection, after the de- 
parture of light. In like manner autho- 
rity, in its attempts to spiritualise and 
separate itself from the whole of the 
inferior life, is thrown into a condition 



THE REVOLUTION. 249 

resembling that produced by the highest 
degree of irritability, and becomes nearly 
powerless and deprived of consciousness. 

As in the condition to which we have 
been alluding, the lower animal life has 
acquired an accession of all that has been 
taken from the higher, as new instincts 
have been awaked in it, a new sense has 
manifested itself in it, which, bound in 
another manner to the forms of space and 
time, looks with ease into itself, as well ^s 
into the surrounding world ; in like manner, 
particularly since the great excitement of 
the war of liberation, the same concaten- 
ation of phenomena has been displayed in 
the third estate. All the faculties formerly 
possessed only by the higher organisation 
of the state, have been developed in the 
third estate ; prophetical organs have 
opened and unfolded themselves in it ; 
formative impulses, long dormant, have 
again awaked ; a sense in the shape of 
public opinion has displayed itself in it, 
which guides all movements, even against 
the will of the public organs ; which looks 
through all the social relations, and at the 
same time both perceives their peculiar 
disease, and assigns the means for curing it. 



250 GERMANY AND 

This common sense, however, rende 
imperiously i .ry. that the existing 

discontent should be tranquillised. by con- 
necting the clemocratical with the monarch- 
ical element in such a manner, that the 
former may reach upwards to the monarch., 
stationed in his irresponsibility at the head 
of society, while the latter descends as 
low afl the commune, which, as a distinct 
community of heads of families, forms the 
basis of society. In the middle membc 
however, both elements, regulated with 
due reference to each other, ought to work 
together simultaneously ; so that the 
monarchical principle may always pre- 
ponderate more and more as we ascend. 
while, in descending, the democratical prin- 
ciple may become always more decidedly 
powerful. 

The communes, where such communes 
as the old Germanic are in actual existence. 
ought necessarily to be left in a state of 
freedom to perform every good and bene- 
ficial operation ; their Schoffen* should be 



* Schoffen^ individuals chosen bv the commun- 

the decision ^: T ::■ 



THE BI 251 

allowed, without molestation, to settle dis- 
putes : their mag: and heads ought [ 
be allowed to administer then uernal 
affairs, and both should, by independent 
election, be chosen from among them in 
such a manner that as er and 
bailiff or justice of pea ultheiss oder 
Friedensrichter) are the link which con- 
nects the monarchical element with the 
commune, their election aloiir uld be 
confirmed by the government. As writ 
law and tradition ought to serve the burger- 
master as a guide in his de:: b :::?. the law 
of the state ought to be the guide of the 
bailiff or justice of peace, and both of them 
in their property of heads the eommv 
should be fully independent, and only con- 
nected with the higher government by 
means of this positive ie. 

This tie immediately connects the j 
xaal and admiiristrative bodies with 
above m free and independent 

societies ; and the bodies in p con- 

nect together on the one hand all th 
communal bodies into on- . and on 

the other hand, become the links which 
connev higher ui:: 



252 GERMANY AND 

In this position then functions partake of 
a threefold character : — in the first place, 
looking downwards, they have a general 
superintendence of the administration of 
justice in the communes, merely however 
limiting the abuse of freedom, but interfer- 
ing in no manner with the use of it ; in the 
second place, looking around them, they 
have the regulation and disposition, with- 
in the determined and distinct circle of 
their activity, of the more general relations 
which come within that circle, not however 
with the same freedom as the communes, 
but still with a certain degree of indepen- 
dence, functions which ought, as far as 
possible, to be discharged in person ; and 
lastly, with respect to the higher authorities 
over them, they are exposed to a still more 
rigid superintendence over themselves, than 
that which they exercise over those below 
them, and must yield unconditional pbe- 
dience to the executive power in every 
thing that is legal and just. 

These higher tribunals will therefore, 
with respect to those immediately below 
them, be in the relation of the monarchical 
to the democratical element, and hence in 



THE REVOLUTION. 253 

proportion as they rise in the hierarchy of 
powers, they ought to be members more 
and more concentrated. The ministries 
ought to be regulated on the principle of 
offices or bureaus, the provincial adminis- 
trations as colleges, but much more com- 
pressed than hitherto, as the estates would 
represent the collegiate multiplicity. Two 
of these collegiate bodies ' might be under 
one president, who, as a central point, 
might, through the intermediation of a pre- 
fect, be connected with the ministries. The 
provincial councils should be placed in the 
same relation to the administrations, and 
connected in various ways with the burger- 
masters and heads of communes. The same 
order of things has been proved by expe- 
rience adapted for the judicial department. 
While the president, however, as organ of 
the higher body, and at the same time head 
of the inferior, may unite the Carolingian 
Sendgraves and Gaugraves * in his person, 
it would be better that in matters of justice 
a separation of authorities should take 



* Village and district officers, who in old times exer- 
cised administrative and judicial duties. Tram. 



254 GERMANY AND 

place. The determination of the fact 
should also be entrusted to elective juries, 
but the application of the law only to the 
judicial authorities. 

As all the office-bearers of the inferior 
orders should, as they descend, partake 
more and more of the democratic element, 
it is indispensably necessary, that in all the 
Provinces their particular laws should again 
be restored, in order that the peculiar re- 
lations of a Province may be adopted as the 
rule for regulating its concerns. All the 
office-bearers of the commune ought to be 
freely chosen by those who possess pro- 
perty and money in it, or, what is equiva- 
lent, exercise an independent industry, in 
order that the State may not be destroyed 
by the dominion of the mob, the govern- 
ment confirming the election as a matter 
of course ; but the higher officers of justice 
and administration, down to the procurators 
and presidents in the different districts, 
should be chosen by the government from 
a three-fold list. The highest of all, how- 
ever, should be named simply and directly 
by the executive power, which ought also 
to be empowered to recall them, whereas 



THE REVOLUTION. 255 

the elective officers should only be remove- 
able from their places by a legal decision. 

To regulate the march of this host of 
office-bearers, and to harmonise the laws 
and regulations under which they act with 
the democratic element, provincial assem- 
blies should be chosen for the more narrow 
circles of local relations, and an imperial 
parliament for the general relations, in 
order that acting on the ministries and mi- 
nisterial persons, and acted on by them in 
return, and carried along and strengthened 
by all those automatons institutions in 
which they have struck their roots as in 
their native earth, they may give form and 
configuration to what may be advantageous 
to the welfare of the community, and what 
may be suitable to its condition. 

In this way only public opinion deems 
it possible to succeed in recovering what 
we lost in centuries of confusion, and in 
solving for ourselves the problem which 
each of the various ages of German history 
has solved in its own way. Till the com- 
munes be again replaced in their natural 
independence, and the stagnating eddy be 
again converted into a current, it is im- 



256 GERMANY AND 

possible to revive the dead feeling of inter- 
est and participation in public affairs ; it 
is impossible otherwise to waken those 
dormant interests with which the preserv- 
ation of the commonweal is essentially con- 
nected. By their more certain and unerring 
activity in their particular spheres, the in- 
definite activity which grasped at every 
thing, however distant, will gradually be 
confined within its proper banks, and the 
diseased excitability will naturally become 
blunted and tranquillised. 

A free communication of thought, limited 
only by the condition of truth in the state- 
ment of facts, and of moral equity in the 
expression of opinions, and of which the 
abuses are only cognisable by a jury, will 
keep up a mental circulation. And now, 
the Constitution, with all its institutions, 
being placed under the all-penetrating in- 
spection of the whole community, the ever- 
lasting and altogether inadmissible controul 
of the central government, one of the prin- 
cipal causes of that excess of writing, which 
may be considered the great disease of all 
Continental States, will no longer be ne- 
cessary. If each Board has its own parti- 



THE REVOLUTION. 257 

cular limits, within which on its own 
responsibility it discharges its particular 
functions, and if these functions are dis- 
charged personally and immediately, as 
much as possible, this would remove an- 
other most prolific source of ruinous abuses. 
The people are now ruled solely by the 
lowest office-bearers, and the orders which 
they receive only serve to confound and mis- 
lead them. Impelled by the natural course 
of things, they are perpetually hovering on 
the brink of anarchy. The monarchy, there- 
fore, in its abstract world, is either in a 
state of complete impotence, and can boast 
of almost no influence whatever in real 
affairs, or it is obliged to have recourse to 
rude violence and force. But instead of 
this loose-paper bond which now connects 
the monarchy with the democracy, let a 
truly organic bond hold together the various 
spheres in a living body, in which one 
member shall perpetually be supported by 
another, and both shall mutually promote 
the common welfare. Should the wholly 
unsubstantial formality of the system of 
government of the present day give way 
in this manner to a more substantial and 



258 GERMANY AND 

vigorous system, the monarchical principle 
would then receive the fulness and strength 
of which it is susceptible, and the govern- 
ments would then cease to flit about like 
so many ignes fatui over a treacherous 
ground, approaching him who prays, and 
flying from him who curses them. By 
leaving so vapoury a condition, and enter- 
ing into a fresh and vigorous life, strength- 
ened by all manner of sound impulses, they 
themselves would become one with it, and 
then the State, animated by them, would 
again be elevated to a true organisation. 

After the institutions which seem to 
secure the safety and tranquillity of the 
state, those which have reference to de- 
fence and protection, are next entitled to 
our consideration. The army summoned 
by the general bann, in the Carolingian 
times, assumed under late emperors the 
forms of the feudal system, which inclined 
more to the democratic; and an army 
formed in this manner, proved itself, during 
many centuries, well adapted for making 
head against every species of danger, and 
extended the name and fame of the Ger- 
mans over all Europe. But when fiefs 
became hereditary, the army soon dege- 



THE REVOLUTION. 259 

nerated into a Janissary cast. All the 
disadvantages of this system then began to 
be developed in it, and remaining, like a 
plant, inseparably connected with the soil, 
it could not fail to lose, in a short time, 
that external activity which is requisite for 
war, and it only retained that internal 
activity which disposed it to tumults and 
disturbances. 

When the new mode of warfare was 
introduced, the military spirit of the nation 
threw itself unwillingly into the opposite 
extreme; and now standing armies were 
resorted to, in the institution of which the 
monarchical principles solely and exclu- 
sively prevail. Blind obedience is the 
only band which holds the whole together, 
and the peculiar and specific honour of 
arms, is the only impulse by which it is 
animated. But when experience had de- 
monstrated the detriment, of which this 
extreme was in turn the cause ; when 
it was soon shown that the same me- 
chanism, in which the constitution be- 
came paralysed, extinguished every thing 
like mind and courage, and confined the 
attention to absurd military foppery, 
and the vain arts of parades ; and, as in 

s 2 



260 GERMANY AND 

both instances, the mind, deprived of all 
field for its exertion, lost itself in empty 
theories, without any commerce with 
reality, and practical knowledge and dex- 
terity, were no where to be found, it was 
perceived that a re-juvenescence in the 
fountain of perpetual youth was become 
indispensably necessary. The landwehr 
system was then attempted. It was per- 
ceived that, as the system of standing 
armies had become general, and the whole 
art of war had taken its shape from that 
system, a necessary historical developement 
was, at all events, represented in it, and that 
an individual state cannot, without danger 
to itself, renounce an institution which, 
from its moveability, from its concentration, 
from its flexibility, and the harmony of its 
movements, can be operated upon by the 
governing idea, with an efficaciousness 
urgently demanded by the nature of things, 
which cannot easily be attained in any other 
way. Hence it is universally allowed, that 
so long as the present military relations 
exist, there is a necessity for continuing 
the army, the proper force of the executive 
power, the peculiar domain of the mo- 
narchical principle, and the representative 



THE REVOLUTION. 261 

of the old warlike train of the prince ; and 
that to give permanency to the idea, a fund 
for the support of this institution ought 
to be granted, in connection with the 
civil list. 

But then to this army, in its nature essen- 
tially obedient, as a foundation for its exist- 
ence, and as the basis of the executive power, 
there ought to be added the landwehr, in 
which the democratic principle essentially 
predominates. The warlike train is con- 
nected with the person of the Prince, and 
advances under his banner. From the 
nature of this force, as the complete renun- 
ciation of volition which it requires cannot 
be claimed, but can only be granted by a 
free determination, it ought in time of peace 
to consist of volunteers and free-recruits 
alone, bound by the oath of service. But 
the landwehr connected with the soil, des- 
tined for its protection, and merely bound 
by the civil oath, should consist of all those 
who have not passed from the protecting to 
the protected class, merely because they 
have become fathers of families, or have 
embraced a business incompatible with 
arms ; and among those capable of this ser- 
vice, no other exception should be allowed 

s 3 



262 GERMANY AJTO 

than that which necessarily results from an 
equitable appreciation of circumstances and 
relations. But as the landwehr is of a civic 
nature, the civic element ought to pre- 
dominate in it. It ought neither to be 
trained in the minutiae of parade arts, nor 
forced to practise them, but merely receive 
that degree of discipline essentially neces- 
sary for war. As the warlike train within 
its circle is bound by its own peculiar laws 
of discipline, and only by way of exception 
in the case of civil crimes is amenable ta 
the civil law, the landwehr-man, on the 
other hand, is essentially subject to the ge- 
neral civil law, and ought only, as an ex- 
ception, when under arms, to be placed 
under a strict, severe, and suitable disci- 
pline, calculated to preserve order and re- 
gularity, without extinguishing the inde- 
pendent feelings of the citizen. As in the 
standing armies, every movement is regu- 
lated by directions from the head, and all 
the appointments proceed from the supreme 
power, in the landwehr again the sub- 
officers up to a certain rank ought to be 
freely elected by the body of the landwehr, 
the election receiving confirmation from the 
government. 



THE REVOLUTION. 263 

In this institution, for which the present 
landwehr regulations of Prussia can only 
be considered as a preparatory trial, the 
knowledge of arms, like reading and writ- 
ing, would be a general qualification pos- 
sessed by all the natives. Warlike exer- 
cises would be one of the many civic duties 
we owe to our country ; and were a com- 
monweal actually gained, this duty would 
soon be viewed as a pastime ; whereas 
now, that nothing remains of liberality, but 
its burdens, the hope only of a better state 
of things in future, renders it at all sup- 
portable. 

When we have regained the exercise of 
arms for our youth, and a participation in 
public affairs for persons of mature age ; 
when a high degree of strength and 
fulness has been communicated internally 
to the state, by the conservative powers 
introduced into its constitution, and when 
strength and dexterity have been given 
externally to the mass by warlike exercises, 
it might then be possible to revive, in 
modern states, a part at least of the fair 
proportion and symmetry which distin- 
guished those of antiquity. It ought, how- 
ever to be the endeavour of the Estates to 

s4 



264 GERMANY ANB 

establish this symmetry between the form- 
ative elements, and the formative powers ; 
to preserve it, when once established ; to 
see that the balance may not be disturbed 
by pursy indolence and self-indulgence* or 
petty routine notions on the one hand, and 
on the other, to guard against indolence and 
early exhaustion of the vital powers, from 
the total consumption of their alimentary 
material by gymnastic exercises, as was the 
case with the Athletae of antiquity* — By a 
prudent exercise of their power over the 
public purse, they may set limits to the 
excessive increase of the warlike train in 
time of peace, while in war they can easily 
strengthen the standing army to any 
amount which the circumstances and re- 
lations of the times may render necessary, 
by determining the number of those who* 
under the banner of the nation, shall pass 
over to it from the landwehr. 

We come now to the third point of dis- 
pute, which in these times has given rise 
to much animosity, namely, the relation 
in which the various Estates ought to be 
placed with respect to the constitution. 
Antiquity, in this as well as in other 
things, following unconsciously its plastic 



THE REVOLUTION. 265 

formative impulse, without availing itself 
of a scaffolding of logical abstractions, com- 
menced the structure of its constitutions 
upon the ground, as it were ; and in this 
respect, the State developed itself organi- 
cally in all its creations, in the order of a 
mathematical series, with constantly in- 
creasing exponents of the uniting mem- 
bers. In the remotest periods of antiquity, 
these different Estates were distinguished ; 
The primaeval comparison of the learned 
Estate, or order, and the whole of the 
priesthood to the head, of the defensive 
order to the arms, and the productive order 
to the body, or rather to the internal vital 
parts, prove that the State was then viewed 
as a living organisation, and that the 
various parts of the community were con- 
sidered as having a relation and adaptation 
to each other. 

This division, originally founded by 
Nature herself in the diversity of races, 
was first introduced in those constitutions, 
which were founded through the superiority 
of the sword over a mere vegetative life, 
and a like superiority of the mind over 
the sword. The noble races, whose vic- 
tories enabled them to found these states, 



266 GERMANY AND 

endeavoured to preserve the purity of their 
blood by strictly separating their casts from 
the rest of the community. Their rights 
and possessions were transmitted by in- 
heritance from generation to generation. 
According to law and custom, the different 
casts were not entitled to intermingle with 
each other ; but when any departure from 
the rule took place, and various half-bloods 
were produced by the mixture of casts, the 
limits and functions of each of them were 
again strictly defined and circumscribed. 

Christianity, by proclaiming the equality 
of all men before God, and by choosing its 
first organs from the lowest classes, sapped 
the foundation of slavery, and the system of 
casts at the same time. As all those who 
had been without rights were admitted to a 
participation of rights, the casts were first 
changed into estates or orders, in which an 
inclination was originally manifested to 
adhere to the former rigid system of ex- 
clusion ; but as the ideal spirit of the new 
faith and the new manners to which it gave 
rise began to gain ground, these unions 
were gradually compelled to relax their 
exclusive principles, and to open their 
closed ranks, and thus the lines of separ- 



THE REVOLUTION. 267 

ation were gradually lost in a general in- 
deflniteness. The estates of the European 
Republic of the middle ages, though 
originally founded, like the old casts, in the 
right of war and conquest, did not, how- 
ever, like these casts, form various tribes, 
who, having erected their Stem-Burgs * at 
various heights, from the lofty summit 
down to the marshy bog, must, in a rapid 
overthrow of privileges and distinctions, 
pass from the overweening pride of the god- 
like regenerate to the lowest depression of 
those whom God, in his anger, has doomed 
to a state of reprobation. Christianity has 
reconciled these cutting distinctions ; it has 
mitigated the transactions, and softened the 
claims of power, By acknowledging the 
spiritual equality of birth of all men, and by 
declaring the lowest of the people to be 
regenerated by baptism, it has drawn the 
divided parts nearer to each other. A 



* In Germany, the Burg, or fortified residence oc- 
cupied by the founder of a particular family is called the 
Siem-Burg (Stamm-Burg) of that family. Thus, for in- 
stance, the Castle of Hapsburg, in Switzerland, is tho 
Stamm-Burg of the Austrian family ; and the Castle of 
Hohenzollern, in Swabia, is the Stamm-Burg of the 
family on the throne of Prussia. Trans. 



268 GERMANY AND 

common bond of love has connected them 
together in one community. Various hos- 
tile souls no longer dwell in one body ; but 
rather various faculties of the same soul, 
which is merely impelled to display itself 
in different ways in different members. 

Hence the learned Estate was essentially 
the preserver of all divine and human wis- 
dom, propagated by tradition from age to 
age. It was the possessor of the whole of 
the mental property which circulated in 
society. It represented in the State the 
Logos, the regulating principle which, from 
its height, gave order and proportion to 
the irregular movements of the lower 
world; and hence the reverend was its 
attribute. 

The defensive Estate, in the middle and 
central part of which the Prince had his 
portion as prime mover, took its station as 
the protection and rock of safety of the 
social union and of the throne. The 
strength of the whole was supposed to be 
united in this Estate: courage was its 
essential character, bravery its instinct, 
honour its inheritance, its sword the per- 
petual protection of the feeble. According 
to ancient doctrine, it was the Thymos in 

7 



THE REVOLUTION. 269 

the social union, and its attribute was 
honourable. 

Finally, in the productive Estate, the 
children of the earth fixed on earthly ob- 
jects ; occupied with the management of 
them, collecting their treasures by the la- 
bour of their hands, and conducting the 
circulation of property from the base to 
the summit, and from the summit again to 
the base, constituted the Epithymia in the 
State, and honesty in dealing, and in all its 
proceedings was its characteristic. 

As the productive Estate is essentially 
moveable, moveable property perpetually 
divided and perpetually re-collected is 
its' possession. As the learned Estate, 
however, from its nature, must be con- 
templative, and essentially tranquil, its 
property ought to be placed under the se- 
curity of a divine interdict. But as the 
defensive Estate occupies the medium be- 
tween the moveable and the tranquil, its 
domain by the feudal system was placed in 
a relation to it, which fluctuated between 
the permanent and the moveable. 

In the same feudal system, nobility, 
which has its portion between the idea 
and its real representation, is also divided 



270 GERMANY AND 

between the democratical and monarchical 
principle, which are united in the aristo- 
cracy. And as the aristocracy was divided 
into seven shields, the hierarchy of the 
church, which is essentially monarchical, 
was also divided into seven shields, namely, 
the pope and his presbytery, the archbi- 
shops, bishops, archdeacons, deans and 
priests, and conventuals. Of the last of 
these, the conventuals, as in the case of the 
free-born men of the seventh shield, it is 
difficult to say whether they belong to the 
episcopal hierarchy, or whether they do not 
form a class by themselves. 

As however all consecration and author- 
ity descend in the other estates, in the 
productive estate all dignity and all right 
are centered in possession. In states 
essentially democratical, or which, on the 
occurrence of anv disorder, struggle to 

»/ * Oct 

become democratical, the same disposi- 
tion to split into a sevenfold division has 
been manifested. The patricians, mer- 
chants, incorporated and unincorporated 
trades in the towns, the members of com- 
munes, (Einsassen,) and persons residing 
in, but not entitled to a share in the pro- 
perty of the commune (Hi?itersas$en), in 



THE REVOLUTION. 271 

the country, with the persons who have no 
fixed homes, form, in like manner, seven 
distinctly marked gradations. 

When later times began to introduce a 
representation of these different estates, by 
way of controlling the territorial power, 
the fundamental idea adopted on that occa- 
sion, was the adding the learned estate to 
the productive and defensive estates, in 
order that if a conflict should arise between 
rights and interests, and power and claims, 
which two parties could not possibly settle, 
a third might be present as a reconciliatory 
power, related to the one by its dignity, 
and to the other through the ecclesiast- 
ical communion, and qualified to decide 
with impartiality between the contending 
parties. 

A still more recent time, struck with the 
various deficiencies which were exhibited 
in the carrying these ideas into actual 
execution, has set forth another doctrine. 
This scaffolding of various states, it is said, 
founded originally in force, and the ad- 
vantages taken of simplicity by cunning, 
is not merely useless but dangerous ; and 
this ascending by powers, though it may 
take place in nature, is for society, which 



272 CxERMANY AND 

consists of elements of a description alto- 
gether different, wholly untenable, and can 
only have the most prejudicial influence on 
its developement. As Christianity has 
established the principle of the complete 
equality of all men before God, the same 
equality ought to be recognised by the 
state and the law. What is spiritually true, 
will not be found really untrue, in a cor- 
poreal point of view. 

On these pretended rights, first usurped by 
overweening power, and afterwards handed 
down by inheritance from generation to ge- 
neration, time itself has gradually taken a 
severe vengeance, and thrown down the 
fences which mere convenience had arbi- 
trarily erected. The ecclesiastical profes- 
sions have long ceased to be the exclusive 
property of the priesthood. All the Estates 
have participated in the honour of arms, and 
the productive Estate has long ceased to 
recognise the obligation of burdening itself 
with all the toils of life for the mere con- 
sumers. Nothing can be so foolish, there- 
fore, as the anxious wish to retain these 
artificial limitations, after they have been 
broken through in all directions. The dis- 
inction too between the industry of towns 



THE REVOLUTION. 273 

and the industry of the country no longer 
exists. The restraints and limitations of 
corporations are still more ridiculous, as 
every man ought to have the liberty of 
following that branch of industry or trade 
for which he is qualified. Moreover, what 
can be more unjustifiable than the privi- 
leges of the nobility, which in themselves 
are necessarily an infringement on the 
rights * of others ? The claim, too, of the 
clergy to control freedom of conscience, is 



* Rights and privileges are in German Rechte and 
Vorrechte. But to a German the word Vorrecht conveys 
a more odious idea than privilege does to an Englishman, 
as it distinctly denotes that the individual possessing it 
has more than his right, and consequently that he possesses 
part of the right of others. The German being an ori- 
ginal language, presents more powerful and distinct 
ideas to the mind than any language not formed from 
roots within itself can possibly do. In the latter case, 
the compound words, having no primitives to give clear- 
ness and permanency to their meaning, are perpetually 
changing their signification. Thus, the word privilege, 
which originally signified a law applicable to individuals, 
has since received all manner of significations, and is at 
present used at one time in the sense of distinction or 
advantage, and at another in the sense of right ; but the 
German word Vor-recht, containing, like the English 
word water-mill, for instance, a fixed definition within 
itself, cannot change its meaning. Trans, 

T 



274 GERMANY AND 

ridiculous in the present day, when the ideas 
on which such a constraint were founded are 
annihilated. 

No mediate body ought therefore to be 
interposed between the Prince and the 
people, which, adhering to both by turns, is 
thus constantly enabled to extort new fa- 
vours and privileges, and to gain a footing 
at the expense of both. But if the con- 
test between this avaricious aristocracy and 
the people were once at an end, the medi- 
ation of the clergy would also be completely 
superfluous. Every fence of property, con- 
fining that which from its nature ought to 
be perpetually fluctuating, to a dead hand*, 
is therefore a robbery of the community, 
and the unnatural restraint cannot be too 
soon broken through, that the consecrated 
estates may again enter into general circula- 
tion, on which, like the circulation of blood 
in the body, the support and strength of the 
state is dependent. 

Let this moveability of possession be 
therefore, in all time to come, the only 
basis of the community, and no other rule 
of possession ought to be allowed. Let 
property in land, therefore, be the demo- 

* Mortmain. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 275 

cratic element, and property in money the 
monarchical. Let there be no domains in 
the state which belongs to the people, and 
let taxes alone be allowed, so that there 
may only be monarchical institutions in it, 
commanded by money, in the manner of 
their payment, and democratical institu- 
tions secured in the liberated land. Hence, 
let there be only a prince in the centre 
surrounded by office-bearers and soldiers ; 
but, in the periphery, let the people remain 
in possession of the whole mass of pro- 
perty. 

That the centre, however, having no firm 
basis, but remaining suspended merely over 
the community, yet containing, at the same 
time, great elasticity in a narrow space, may 
not violently disturb this state of things, 
firm and secure in its basis, but spread over 
a wide extent, let a representation be ap- 
pointed. This representation should not 
be connected with any corporation, any 
general fantastical idea, any moral personi- 
fication, not even with any territorial divi- 
sion, province, county, town, or borough, as 
in England; the number should be regulated 
alone by property, and measured according 
to the number of those capable of voting. 
t 2 



276 



GERMANY AND 



Such a representation, which does not, like 
the Feudal Estates, represent casts merely, 
but the whole community, will serve as a 
counterbalance to the weight of the office- 
bearers, and the collision between these 
two powers will serve to elicit what is most 
advantageous to the public. 

It is easy to perceive, that the character 
of this system, as it is founded on the con- 
flict of opposite powers, is altogether phy- 
sico-mathematical. Although, therefore, in 
the order of history, it is an actual advance, 
when considered with reference to its real 
value, as contrasted with the former organic 
system, it is a retrogression. The explan- 
ation of this contradiction must be sought 
for in the character of the age, which should 
be viewed as a period of transition to an- 
other, when what has been destroyed shall be 
reconstructed on a broader foundation and 
with a higher elevation. The powers, there- 
fore, which are by their conflict to deter- 
mine the equilibrium, are altogether earthly 
powers. The specific egotistical power of 
landed property, which, like gravity, in- 
clines always to its own centre, and to its 
peace and security, is placed in collision with 
the universal power of money, which, in 



THE REVOLUTION. 277 

perpetual systole and diastole, rushes from 
the common centre to the extremities, and 
from the extremities again to the centre, 
and contending with individual obstinacy, 
guides it against its will into a distinct and 
definite course. 

This course, however, when, by the for- 
tunate balancing of powers and counter- 
powers, it has been at length found, can 
only be steadily pursued during the con- 
tinuance of the equilibrium, as to which 
we can hardly calculate on the influence of 
any moral powers. On the preponderancy 
of the one principle, it will run eccentri- 
cally into democracy ; and if the other pre- 
vails, it will run concentrically into des- 
potism. Such changes may be introduced 
with the more ease, as the nature of the 
representation brings the opposite powers, 
which have been collected, as it were, in 
two foci, close to each otherj in the 
chambers. The democracy chooses its of- 
ficers with as much freedom as the Prince 
his officers: its will is as much concentrated 
in its deputies, as that of the Prince in his 
ministries. As the soldiers of the Prince 
are numbered according to their regiments, 
the electors are also numbered in their own 

t 3 



278 GERMANY AND 

service ; and these two hierarchies rise and 
fall like the orders in the decimal system. 
In the conflict of the two powers, depend- 
ing on the Prince's and the people's favour, 
the friction when the oxygen comes into 
contact with an inflammable substance must 
necessarily kindle a violent flame. 

This catastrophe antiquity endeavoured 
to guard against. By admitting, for exam- 
ple, in the incorporations of trades, some- 
thing of the monarchical element into the 
democratical, it could push this automatous 
principle in the corporation of nobles as far 
as the throne; and by the interweaving 
and uniting the opposite powers throughout 
the whole political body, their edges were 
blunted. The rays which, w 7 hen collected 
into one focus, produce a violent flame, 
when distributed over the whole society 
diffused a mild and agreeable warmth. 

The lawgivers of that age, not guided by 
abstract systems, but rather moved, like the 
poets, by inspiration, in the fulness of a 
sort of an instinctive formative-impulse, in 
addition to the mere quantitative bodies, 
founded on number, as freehold, tithing, 
hundred, district or province (gau), and 
duchy, and which, as they belong to the 



THE REVOLUTION* 279 

original forms of the constitution, are the 
only bodies which the present age will 
acknowledge, admitted also qualitative bo- 
dies, founded on internal specific and higher 
differences, into the various Estates. Their 
constitutions, removed from the province 
of mere chemistry, were actually elevated 
to that of a higher movement of life. In- 
stead of that political Brownonianism which 
would merely acknowledge the relation of 
two factors in life, and subject it by turns 
to a state of sthenia and asthenia, a trulv 
organic view of the phenomena of life in 
the political body was entertained. In this 
view, the political body was composed of 
systems connected in many ways, display- 
ing their innate powers in many different 
directions, and internally softening every 
collision of a more severe nature bv a con- 
tinual gradation of members. 

They were very well aware, that by thus 
increasing the number of bodies by an ideal 
series, along with the general interest, 
which, like the feeling of life, pervades the 
whole, they created a number of particular 
interests, which might easily come into a 
destructive conflict with it ; but they w£re 
also aware that in conflict alone all life is 
t 4 



280 GERMANY AND 

produced, and that if the higher connecting 
love is not wanting to the community, the 
dissension will always be tranquillised 
before it ends in a total destruction. They 
knew also, on the other hand, that impulses 
of nature, which form interests in society, 
are not necessarily annihilated, because 
they have no organ in the constitution ; 
and that it is absurd to suppose, that in a 
general corporation the particular faculties 
would remain dormant and inactive, if 
their existence were not recorded in par- 
ticular institutions. 

They were also well aware that the prin- 
ciple of universal equality, once acknow- 
ledged for ideal relations, must, to be logi- 
cally consistent, go back to an Agrarian 
law, and can only remain tranquil in a 
decided democracy. In the Florentine 
history, the inferior nobility first mastered 
the higher ; the inferior nobility were then 
expelled by the corporate companies; these 
were attacked, in their turn, by the half 
incorporated * ; and they again were com- 



* Halbziinftigen. By this the Author must mean the 
inferior trades (Arti Minori), of which there were 14 
in Florence ; the number of superior trades ( Arti Mag- 
giori) was 7. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 281 

bated in a furious insurrection by the rab- 
ble * ; and at last, after all order was dis- 
solved, this free State was left a ready and 
easy prey for any tyrant That tyrant 
soon arose in the person of the first 
Medici, from the midst of the third Estate 
itself. 

In like manner, according to the notions 
prevailing in the present day, the privileges 
of towns will appear to the inhabitants of 
the country an intolerable tyranny ; and as 
the freemen of corporate towns do not 
amount to half the number of the coun- 
try people, they will soon be overcome 
and driven off by them. In the progress 
of things, the villages, towns on a small 
scale, will become odious to the old Saxon 
Friborgs f ; and the exclusive possession of 



* Heimathlosen, literally homeless. The Author must 
allude here to the Tumulto de' Ciompi, an insurrection 
commenced by the persons employed by the woollen 
and other manufacturers, on the pretence of insufficiency 
of wages. Trans. 

f The Author here supposes the Friborg or Treo- 
borhz to have been a smaller collection of houses than 
a village, something more like a hamlet. In Spehnan, 
Somner, Du Cange, &c. on the authority of the 19th 
Chapter of the Laws of Edward the Confessor, it Is 
stated to be a college or society of ten of the principal 



282 GERMANY AND 

the manor by the freemen will next be an 
abomination in the eyes of the lowest class 
of the. peasantry (Hintersassen) ; and thus 
things can never rest till all the villages 
are dissolved, all properties divided, and 
every inhabitant receives his equal portion. 
As, therefore, the old system of casts is 
founded on the inequality of men establish- 
ed by Nature, secured to the race, and 
enforced by superior power, the system of 
the present policy is founded on an ideal, 
which can only be realised at the end of 
time, when, through the power of money 
and industry, all inequality of possession 
has been removed ; when the difference of 
natural endowments has been destroyed by 
cultivation ; when all estates have been so 
intermingled, that every head of a family 
may at the same time be High Priest, 
Commander-in-Chief, and the enlarger and 
supporter of the whole empire. As, how- 



men in each village, who were responsible to the King 
for each other. The Saxon word Borge, a security, is 
by etymologists generally derived from Burg, a fortress, 
as affording security, so that the word Friborg may either 
be interpreted free security, or the free place, by which 
the security was given. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 283 

ever, the present is interposed between the 
beginning and the end of things, and in all 
probability is nearer the commencement 
than the termination, both systems are 
equally inapplicable, and the last more so 
even than the first ; and it would be well, 
therefore, to have recourse to a medium, 
the modified Estates-system. 

Having reached this point, we can now, 
without difficulty, explain the ground of 
the whole of the misconception in the 
present theory, which lies in this, that the 
idea, though essentially free and uncondi- 
tional in itself, on its entrance into a real 
representation, is subject to the conditions 
of a natural necessity, which, on any violent 
revolution or change, may, indeed, be 
warded off for a time, but which on the 
re-action soon takes a dreadful revenge for 
this inattention to the universal laws of 
Nature. Hence Christianity, which merely 
considers the ideal man, could pronounce, 
without hesitation, the equality of men 
before God ; but the inequality of men in 
the eye of the State is connected with va- 
rious relations, for instance, with the man- 
ner in which Nature has dealt out her 



284 GERMANY AND 

gifts, with the manner in which the living 
has taken possession of the real, and with 
positive rights derived from earlier times. 
In like manner, the alchemists might 
establish theoretically the idea (well-found- 
ed in itself) of the similarity of all metals ; 
but when they endeavoured to realise this 
idea by transmutation, they found in these 
laws of Nature, by which they were repre- 
sented in a divided state, an unconquerable 
obstacle to their attempts. 

Those very metals, which should pass 
for more or less in society, according to 
the measure of the advantage derived from 
them, have become for it an image of the 
internal specific difference, as their relative 
price is established agreeably to a standard 
altogether conventional, and in no manner 
according to their utility. In the same 
manner in paper money, the same rag, 
without any intrinsic worth whatever, passes 
for one, ten, or a hundred, of any supposed 
value, merely because society has agreed to 
take it at such and such a rate. The State 
has proceeded, with respect to the Estates, 
on the principle followed in fixing the 
value of metals. The Estates may certainly 



THE REVOLUTION. 285 

be modified by a reformation, in such a 
manner as to adapt them to the age ; but 
they can only be wholly abolished by a 
revolution. 

In the remotest times a nobility existed 
in Germany. These nobles, after many 
conflicts in the expeditions of the Franks, 
succeeded in subduing all Germany, and 
at length almost all Europe. At a later 
period, under the feudal system, they 
formed the knighthood, and partly elevated 
themselves to the situation of immediate 
estates of the empire. At a still later 
period, they again entered the retinue in 
the standing armies and the court service, 
and thus they have come down to us in a 
determinate shape, and with positive rights. 
With these rights they now enter into the 
great contest for right. The conduct of 
the Congress up to this hour, has convinced 
them, that to make sacrifices without con- 
straint, is a piece of folly ; and that self- 
willed power, in the long run, succeeds in 
carrying every point. This maxim they 
intend to act on in their turn, and they 
demand back their privileges as their right, 
without infringement. 



286 GERMANY AND 

On the other hand, the third Estate are 
enraged in the highest degree, that their 
rights must discharge all the debts of the 
past and the present times. In vain they 
are told of the romantic and the middle 
ages, the patriarchal condition of old times, 
of ideal and real characters. Their sound 
sense and correct tact tell them that they 
have long outgrown their old relations ; 
that the forms, dead in themselves, have 
long become top narrow for their enlarged 
life. They feel, that if old rights have 
devolved to the nobles from the remotest 
antiquity, young rights have arisen in 
themselves, which they are in no way 
warranted in surrendering. They feel, in 
short, that the time is come for concluding 
a completely new contract between the 
different classes of society. However much 
the conflicting parties may in the heat of 
a dispute deny each other's rights, and to 
whatever length they may carry exagger- 
ation, yet when a contract is in contempla- 
tion, the contracting parties must commence 
with a mutual guarantee of the durability 
of their separate existences. 

However much, therefore, we may extol 



THE REVOLUTION. 287 

the princes with corrupting eulogies, and 
attack the nobles as the only source of all 
mischief; the princes will never seriously 
persuade themselves that an estate of which 
the rights rest on the same foundation with 
their own legitimacy, is essentially hostile 
to them. The nobles, again attracted by 
their interests to the throne under ordinary 
circumstances, now feeling themselves vio- 
lently driven from the third Estate, must 
necessarily devote themselves to the policy 
of the court with an accelerated motion. 
And accordingly this has uniformly taken 
place in Bavaria, Baden, Nassau, and every 
where else, as soon as the empty combats 
with the tongue began to terminate in any 
actual result. 

On the other hand, a bold and dangerous 
game is now played by those members of 
the nobility, who, delaying by their in- 
trigues the conclusion of a salutary work, 
add only to the general irritation, and waken 
all the dormant passions. When the en- 
raged animal breaks loose, when the raging 
sea has forced its way through the feeble 
sand-banks, the deluge will then overtake 
these audacious men. Both parties have, 



288 GERMANY AND 

indeed, an equal interest in coming to an 
amicable arrangement. The one party 
should prudently give up what cannot be 
retained, and satisfy themselves with a part 
of their claims, which are certainly well 
founded, in a legal point of view. The 
other should bethink themselves, that in 
the most despotic of all constitutions, that 
of the Turks, there are no nobility, and 
that consequently the mere disappearance 
of that body affords no additional security 
against the arbitrary power of the ruler. 
By accepting of a remission of claims under 
a peaceable arrangement, instead of anni- 
hilating the whole by force, a general bank- 
ruptcy will be prevented, in which it is true 
all positive law would yield to the law of 
Nature ; but other debts would be incurred, 
for whose payment every individual, from 
the highest to the lowest, must be per- 
sonally answerable. 

Such an arrangement in Germany seems 
evidently to be favoured by events. The 
gulph of a revolution actually passed, is 
not interposed here as in France between 
the parties ; on the contrary, circumstances 
themselves have prepared the way for a 



THE REVOLUTION. 289 

union. The third Estate following in its 
developement the general course of nature, 
has agreeably to that course produced from 
itself the two higher Estates, namely, the 
Learned Estate, in the literati properly so 
called, who, under the name of philoso- 
phy, dedicate themselves to the profane 
sciences; and a nobility of merit, who, during 
the late times, have more particularly ac- 
quired distinction and honour in war ; and 
as citizens, now demand their place in the 
chamber and the aristocracy of property 
and talent. On the other hand, the nobles, 
when as land proprietors they have been 
forced to rely chiefly on themselves, as in 
the Rhenish provinces, for instance, have 
joined the third Estate ; and the clergy 
may almost be said to flourish now only 
in their popular element, of priests and 
curates. 

Sound sense would, therefore, seem to 
point to the only means of reconciliation 
which still remains. The third Estate, with 
its new nobility and clergy of to-day and 
yesterday, should recognise the old Estates 
of the same name, which came down to us 
from past times ; and both should enter 

u 



290 GERMANY AND 

into a union with each other, mutually re- 
nouncing old privileges and new preten- 
sions, at variance with a constitution suited 
to the times. The historical nobles would, 
by recognising, in addition to birth, merit 
as the second necessary efficient of the 
future nobility, and by entering into a 
union by means of this very efficient, with 
the moveable nobility of merit of the 
third Estate, would thereby renovate them- 
selves. Let the clergy no longer flee 
from science as the deceitful serpent, but 
rather, by the power of conviction, convert- 
ing its centrifugal direction with regard to 
religion into a centripetal one, constrain it 
to devote its services to truth, and thus 
honouring the rights of that mental free- 
dom which the age can in no manner re- 
nounce, restrain it solely through itself, 
and thereby introduce religion once more 
into life. The devising the institutions by 
means of which this union, here alluded to 
only in a general manner, may be carried 
into execution in all its details, will be the 
problem for the employment of the times 
immediately succeeding the present, and the 
solution of which, as we believe, will mark 



THE REVOLUTION. 291 

in the most essential point the character of 
the future constitutions. 

In such an order of things, as the anti- 
quated will be refreshed from the fountain 
of perpetual youth, which flows in the third 
Estate, and by its mellow oleaginous quality 
matured in the course of years, will soften 
and temper, in turn, the fiery and ungovern- 
able nature of the recent wine ; a new and 
durable organisation, of which centuries 
may witness the existence, before it attains 
another climacteric, will be obtained from 
the elements of the old and ruinous politi- 
cal body, by a gradual developement, with- 
out recurring to the dangerous revolution- 
ary incantations of Medea. As the third 
Estate is according to property, divided 
into moveable wealth and land, and as the 
latter again is divided into the flowing and 
the fixed, the nobility will, in like manner, 
be twofold, a nobility of merit, which 
grounded every where in the choice of the 
people, as a war-estate in the Landwehr, 
as a peace-estate in the office-bearers of the 
democracy and in its representatives, and a 
nobility of birth, which descending from 
past times, and placed by authority as a 
u 2 



292 GERMANY AND 

military estate chiefly in the standing army, 
and in civil relations, in places at court 
about the person of the Prince, ranks among 
the civil officers named by the Government, 
and among the hereditary representatives 
in the legislature. As the popular choice 
may as often fall on birth, as the choice of 
the Prince may fall on merit, both elements 
may cross each other in all these institu- 
tions. In like manner the learned Estate 
will complete its twofold character, when 
on the one hand the clergy, as the guard- 
ians of belief, resting on the Scriptures, and 
tradition, shall cherish the esoterical, handed 
down from past ages, and not exclude the 
exoterical, the result of experience and 
speculation in the sciences, but rather ac- 
knowledge thern as the real side of religion. 
By greeting the cultivators of science as 
their associates, as was the case in old times, 
and not living merely in the past, but enter- 
ing into an animated commerce with the 
present age, a state of things might be es- 
tablished, which it may seem impossible 
indeed to introduce elsewhere ; but which, 
from the direction the German philosophy 



the Devolution. 293 

has taken in latter times, may be considered 
as something altogether national. 

In this manner the two elements of the 
Estates will be united together in the 
most perfect manner. Authority descend- 
ing from above as an expression of majesty, 
connecting itself with the authority of the 
Church, will descend through the Court, 
the nobility of birth, the establishment of 
office-bearers, and the army, all emanations 
from legitimacy ; while freedom, essentially 
an emanation from the people, will first 
establish the basis of life in the third Estate, 
and then display its volition in the Land- 
wehr and the office-bearers of the demo- 
cracy. It will at last elevate itself, in the 
shape of public opinion, to the mental 
height, and obtain an organ in the learned 
Estate. 

In the same order and union the repre- 
sentation will collect the scattered rays of 
these three faculties in one focus. In recent 
times the example of England has led to 
an almost general preference of the system 
of two Chambers, uniting a majority of the 
nobility with a minority of Prelates and 
Deputies from Universities in one Cham- 

u 3 



294 GERMANY AND 

ber, and composing the second wholly of 
Commons. Such an order of things, from 
the almost complete absorption of the men- 
tal element, converts the three powers into 
two, and introduces all the disadvantages of 
an opposition, without any connection. 
The nobility, which predominates in the 
Chamber of Peers, cannot from its nature 
be a mediator between the Commons and 
the throne. Being an emanation from 
majesty, it is overshadowed by it, and in 
the ordinary course of things will be on its 
side. In a conflict, therefore, it is opposed 
as a party to the third Estate. In the 
Chambers, authority and freedom contend 
for their respective interests, and if the one 
has a veto on the other, the opposed and 
equal powers neutralise each other. The 
whole proceedings in all important things 
become a mere piece of grimace, -a pure 
political farce, a parade, where there is 
much fighting and much marching and coun- 
termarching, but where, after all, nothing 
serious is effected. Moreover, as the con- 
flicting parties, separated by walls, can only 
communicate with each other, by means of 
the dead letter, they are cut off from that 



THE REVOLUTION. 295 

approximation which living and oral inter- 
course introduces ; and the hostile brothers 
remain shut up in their separate houses, 
most implacably disposed towards each 
other. Public opinion naturally combats 
for one of the Chambers ; the other, sepa- 
rated from the people, must withdraw 
sullenly into a corner, and bask in the 
favour of the Court. The nobility, how- 
ever, deprived of every opportunity of wrest- 
ling with the Commons in a living combat, 
has no opportunity of acquiring the quali- 
fications demanded of them, and spoil and 
rot in their tedious solitude. 

To introduce, therefore, a fresh and rapid 
animation into the assembly of the Estates, 
and to call forth an active interchange of 
powers, in which every description of 
talents should participate for the advan- 
tage of the community, it will be found 
most advisable to unite the three Estates in 
one Chamber, and arrange them in three 
Curiae. The first would comprehend the 
Commons, and in such a manner that the 
principal interests should be represented, 
in which this Estate is divided. As the 
Corporations are for the most part abol- 

u4 



296 GEltMANY AND 

ished, and their re-introduction by Govern- 
ment would merely be a repetition of the 
violence which took place at the abolition ; 
and as the division of the representation 
in the present relations of the trades 
would be altogether trifling and unprofit- 
able ; the only divisions which, under the 
present circumstances, can be seriously 
thought of, is that of country and town. 

The commerce of towns may be com- 
pared to the breath of life ; and agricul- 
ture in the country, to its nourishment. 
Although in the animal economy the appa- 
ratus for the latter function is, in respect to 
quantity, much greater than that which 
serves for the process of breathing, yet with 
respect to quality they are fully equal to 
each other, being equally necessary to its 
existence. In like manner both functions 
of society are of equal importance, and in 
dignity the latter is one step higher than 
the other. Hence the effect of the exclu- 
sively qualitative representation would be 
shown most evidently in this, that if the 
representation of the country should always 
be double in number to that of the towns, 
as soon as the representatives come to an 



THE REVOLUTION. 297 

understanding respecting their interests, on 
the question respecting the proportion of the 
direct to the indirect taxes, corn laws, &c. the 
most detrimental consequences would be 
exhibited. It might, therefore, be agreeable 
and advisable to allow to both together a 
greater number of representatives than are 
sent by the two higher Estates : but to place 
the town and the country on an equality with 
each other in this respect, and to divide them 
into two benches. The town bench might 
also be subdivided into two others ; that of 
the possession of money for merchants, ca- 
pitalists, &c. and that of trade and industry, 
for manufacturers and tradesmen, chosen 
according to the number of voters. The 
bench for the country might be chosen 
according to the relation of property. 

The second Curia of the nobility would 
also be divided into two benches ; one per- 
ennial, consisting of hereditary peers of the 
old nobility, on account of birth ; the other 
periodical, consisting of the nobility of 
merit, nominated by the prince, from the 
office-bearers of the democracy, the heads 
of the Landwehr, &c. Finally, the third 
Curia> would in like manner consist of one 



298 GERMANY AND 

bench filled by the priesthood of the vari- 
ous confessions, partly in virtue of election, 
and partly in virtue of their office ; and by 
another bench of learned men. In the pro- 
vincial assemblies, the directors of Gymna- 
sia, and other institutions for education, 
may sit as the abbots of convents did in 
former times ; and the election and en- 
dowment must then necessarily be con- 
nected with the democracy ; but in the 
Imperial assemblies, deputies should be 
sent from these institutions, and others 
from the universities and academies. 

In such a chamber the two principal ele- 
ments of every constitution would run 
through all the three Curiae. By their spe- 
cific division, however, into various organs, a 
certain healing power would be infused 
into the whole, by means of which the two 
opposite elements might be tranquillised, 
and the disputes arranged internally ; and 
thus the evil would be avoided of allowing 
things to proceed to an extremity, as in the 
system of two chambers, or having recourse 
to a forcible adjustment. 

As in such an order of things, the union of 
the two higher Estates with the Court, a cir- 



THE REVOLUTION. 299 

cumstance not only conceivable, but which 
has but too often taken place, might easily 
oppress the Commons ; to provide against 
such an event, their great and permanent 
interests ought to be secured by the manner 
of voting, which might be variously modi- 
fied, according to the character of the sub- 
ject to be determined. As in the grants 
of taxes and conscriptions, geometrical and 
ponderable magnitude of possession on the 
one hand, and arithmetical numbers on the 
other hand are concerned, the division 
ought here to be regulated by a simple 
majority of votes on a telling of the voters, 
on which occasion, the third Estate ought 
properly to have the casting vote. In all 
investigations which have any reference 
to the democratic element of the consti- 
tution, and its relations upwards, or to the 
aristocratical element, and its relations 
downwards, the voting by benches ought 
to be adopted. In all the more ele- 
vated relations, in all subjects of higher 
legislation, in all matters in which the 
monarchical principle and the ecclesiastical 
preponderate, as it must be presumed that 
a knowledge of them belongs as essentially 



300 



GERMANY AND 



to the government and the higher Estates, as 
fitness, ability, and knowledge of affairs to 
the people, it might be proper to vote by 
Curiae ; with this proviso, however, that in 
all essential changes of the constitution ; as 
originally agreed on, along with the consent 
of the Prince, a majority in the three 
Curiae should be required. In all other 
disputes of an important nature, as three 
elements are always present, a third will 
of course be interposed between the two 
conflicting parties ; and as the nobles and 
commons will, from their interests, come 
most frequently into collision, the learned 
Estates may then discharge the functions 
of an umpire between them. 

These forms, although fashioned accord- 
ing to the laws of nature, may receive various 
other applications, and may be modified in 
various other ways ; as nature, though in 
all her living formations she selects the 
human form for her fundamental type, yet 
displays the greatest variety in the modifica- 
tion of the elements and relations of which 
the whole is composed ; but these forms 
contain merely the automaton of the State, 
which is nothing but a lifeless carcase when 



THE REVOLUTION. 301 

deprived of the internal soul that can alone 
preserve and move it, and give to it its 
spirit and character. 

There are three fundamental principles 
of this communication of soul, which differ 
in dignity according to the elevation of the 
faculty in which they are rooted. The first 
is religion, which deriving its consecration 
from a higher region than the earth, seeks 
to infuse a sanctity into what is earthly, 
and converts the State into a sacrament. 
The ancient priesthood, — States, with which 
history every where begins, as the first 
government on earth had the form of 
theocracy, — were characterised by the pre- 
dominancy of this principle. The priest- 
hood having, in the course of time, allowed 
themselves to be carried away by arrogance, 
power, strength, and courage, soon asserted 
their right ; and kings arose, who at the 
head of their followers subjected the nations 
from east to west, and gradually founded 
those universal monarchies, of which the 
acts are recorded in the book of ages. 
Here honour and the military virtues pre- 
dominated ; and the sword, as a sceptre, 
succeeded to the pastoral staff. But when 
1 



302 GERMANY AND 

power degenerated into despotism, and 
oppressed the natives with an insup- 
portable burden ; all those in whom any 
energy, and any mental elasticity still re- 
mained, threw off at last the yoke from 
their necks, and democracies arose. Mea- 
sures, and standards, and the plowshare, 
now came to be held in honour ; civic 
virtues and republican feelings now came 
to be in request ; to honour succeeded 
honesty ; to consecration, ethical dignity, 
resting on the moral nature of man and the 
conscience. 

This is the march which constitutions 
have taken throughout all antiquity, de- 
scending from the height of motives, tran- 
scending the region of the senses, down to 
a sensible, blunt, and business-like reality. 
Thus it was in the East ; thus it was with 
the Greeks in the time of the priests, 
through the heroical age, down to the age 
of the people ; thus it was with the 
Romans, whose theocracy originated in the 
Etruscan, who then run rapidly through 
their second period under their kings, to 
fill at last the greater part of their career in 
democracy. 



THE REVOLUTION. 303 

Antiquity, however, represents to us 
only the ascending half of history. — 
Modern history, down to the middle ages, 
exhibits the same ascent in a different 
order. After this ascent in the people 
of ancient cultivation had terminated in 
the ruin of democracy, through Alexander 
and the Roman emperors, and Christianity 
had founded a new priesthood-State, the 
north, entering into the circle of culti- 
vation for the first time, developed from 
the still vigorous democracy of the Ger- 
manic tribes a new universal monarchy 
under Charlemagne, and then through that 
monarchy, diffused the great theocracy 
over all Europe. But when under the 
Rhenish-frank emperors, in the highest 
stage of their dominion, a severe struggle 
took place between the warriors and the 
priests, these two powers were both severe 
sufferers from this conflict. The temporal 
power, however, first withered, and with 
the Swabian emperors the fame and the 
strength of Germany terminated. But the 
priesthood, after their support had fallen 
from beneath them, were equally weakened 
by internal dissension, ruined bv de- 



304 GERMANY AND 

generacy, overthrown at last by the Reform- 
ation in the whole of the north, and shaken 
to their very foundations in the south. 
The empire followed the church, having 
been supplanted by territorial sovereignty. 
This last, again, has lost itself in its ab- 
stractions. And thus, as when the flower 
has withered, and the plant become dry, 
the life inclosed in the seed returns to the 
earth ; in like manner, in the midst of 
the reign of universal despotism, the ori- 
ginal democracy has been restored, though 
not de facto, yet potentialiter by a second 
ascending movement. 

It) is not indeed the old vigorously- 
shooting forest-power, with its fulness of 
natural impulses, which here returns ; for 
there is a whole epoch of cultivation be- 
hind it ; and the reproduction preceded in 
the character of the history which was ad- 
vancing. But what was lost in the pro- 
vince! °f nature has been compensated for 
in thd mental province. Hence an internal 
instinct impels the age unconsciously to- 
wards! every thing by which it can fill the 
new circle which is opened to it. It 
struggles with all its strength to extricate 



THE REVOLUTION. 305 

itself from that arbitrary power, more 
especially with which it feels there can no 
longer be any agreement, no longer any 
security externally, and no peace internally, 
no dignity, no hope, no love. 

Arbitrary power itself has paved the 
way for this disposition. The lumber of 
statistics, the politico-economical doctrine 
of feeding, which would fatten men like 
so many cattle at the stall, and for the sake 
of gain would cram the bodily at the ex- 
pense of the mental part of man, if all had 
succeeded according to its wishes, and men- 
tal emotions had not burst forth against its 
will with the rapidity of lightning, would 
have ended at last with that abominable 
Cretinism, in which the whole of the higher 
man, having sunk down into the mere 
vegetative sphere, lives merely in the glands. 
All this proved that authority had been 
long in a diseased state, and nearly on the 
point of falling a prey to the automatous. 

Hence it is quite in the spirit of an age, 
bent, like the present, on emancipation, 
that, in the feeling of its necessities, and 
knowing where its strength and its weak- 
ness lies, it should shut its ear to every 

x 



306 GERMANY AND 

thing that is not obvious to the senses. 
We may discover, without much difficulty, 
the source from which it has derived the 
fondness for constructing constitutions, like 
machines, according to the laws of the 
lever and the inclined plane, and in which 
landed property forms the dragging weight, 
and money the impelling spring ; the cham- 
ber, the pendulum which regulates all the 
movements. The inclination to this me- 
chanical system, as matters are now situat- 
ed, is not to be condemned. Every age 
must act in the spirit which animates it, 
and the formative Proteus being now a 
mechanician, employed inputting together 
political machines, we must not by our 
obstinate opposition disturb him in his 
operations. 

But at the same time we must never 
forget, that as in external mechanics we 
have long acknowledged the laws of nature 
to be fixed, and considered every attempt 
to oppose them egregious folly, we ought 
in like manner to admit in mentally-politi- 
cal mechanics the ethical laws, which 
stand on an equal degree of elevation with 
these physical laws, and punish in an 

15 



THE REVOLUTION. 307 

equally unrelenting manner every violation 
of them. The physical propositions, that 
with unequal ends of the lever, and with 
equal weight, the burdens must be in the 
inverse ratio of the length of the ends, or 
that in the descent of bodies the spaces are 
in the ratio of the squares of the periods of 
descent, are not more certain, not more 
unconditionally true in nature, than are, in 
the mental world, the moral laws, that 
rights and duties, freedom and obedience, 
giving and taking, are conditional with 
respect to each other ; that every act of 
violence calls forth an opposite act of vio- 
lence, and every extreme an extreme to 
combat it ; that the omission of an enjoined 
good is as blameable an offence as the com- 
mission of a prohibited evil ; that war holds 
necessarily the extreme points of opposi- 
tion, while peace is only found in the tem- 
perature of the middle, &c. All these 
ethical laws ought to be received in society 
as equal in certainty with mathematical 
axioms ; they ought, as inviolable maxims 
of universal application, to be mixed up with 
all its elements. When this is the case, it 
may then follow its instinct without danger ; 

x 2 



308 GERMANY AND 

it may then found its constitutions solely 
on agriculture and commerce? on joint stock 
shares and the aristocracy of property: 
dividing the operating and living powers in 
the constitution in various ways, and unit- 
ing them again diagonally, it may prose- 
cute its mathematical amusements, and its 
stoichyometrical calculations, reduce society 
to the lowest stage of life, and convert it 
into a thousand-armed polypus. 

When civic virtue becomes the only po- 
litical prudence, this mechanism will then 
receive its animation, such as the age can 
give it, and only then, as an organic body, 
will it be able to protect and preserve itself. 
But never will this object be attained, if, 
assuming the badness of all men as an un- 
doubted fact, according to the prejudice 
which at present prevails, more especially 
in France, we suppose we can find in forms 
and all their guarantees, and equipoises 
and controls, a surrogate for honesty. 
Every attempt on this principle has 
failed, and we may well consider this 
as a pursuit in the moral world, of a phan- 
tom still more unessential, if possible, than 
that of the perpetuum mobile in mechanics. 



THE REVOLUTION. 309 

With the most perfect justice, therefore, 
and with the most praiseworthy constancy, 
Adam Midler in all his writings directs his 
attacks from the higher ground, on which 
he takes his station, against this dreadful 
error, which, originating in the coarsest 
and most material views, is as peculiar to 
the French in politics, as the system of 
enjoyment and self-love, well understood, 
has been in morals since the time of Hel- 
vetius. If Germans, however, have also 
participated in such a system, this has only 
been an error of individuals, which will 
never strike a durable root in the ethical 
sense of the nation. 

Every thing, on the contrary, is now in- 
clining to a different point. A general 
rectitude, and the idea of republican virtues, 
mitigated and supported by the remains of 
religious motives still in operation, are on 
the point of becoming the prevailing spirit 
of the public life of the nation. We ought 
not to complain that the course of the times 
has driven us to the adoption of views of 
too material a nature respecting state and 
constitution. This is the necessary con- 
sequence of what preceded : in the mo- 

x 3 



310 GERMANY AND 

ther's womb the plastic powers alone pre- 
dominate in the obscurity of secresy, and 
the same thing has taken place in the work 
of formation of this century. We should 
preserve for the future all the parts of the 
former stage of formation, which still appear 
verdant and vigorous, and secure them 
against the wild tendency to destruction, 
which has taken possession of the present 
age. Pointing to a higher state of things, 
we may still kindle the spiritual flame where 
it burns dimly ; and the spirit which re- 
mains hovering above the mass, will, in 
those who have out-run the age, give mo- 
tion to its wings, that the breath of life 
may penetrate the work with its warming 
and genial influence. 

But we can no more make futurity the 
subject of a postulate, than we can again 
awake the times which are past. Religion, 
which for the most part has withdrawn into 
the hearts of men, has for a time ceased 
to be a great constructing principle, as well 
as the old honour, which, in the general 
absence of honour during late centuries, be- 
came dried up. Hence the master in the 
present times employs only as workmen 



THE REVOLUTION. 311 

those whom he finds still vigorous, and 
uses the others merely as assistants, ac- 
cording to their strength and power. When 
the generation, who, in the exigencies of 
a stormy period were strengthened only 
for the present, at the expense of their 
feeling for the future and the past, are once 
departed ; when democracy has once ex- 
tricated itself from the formal despotism to 
which it was bound, and struck a root in 
the old ground, and thereby given strength 
also and animation to powerless monarchy ; 
w T hen tranquillity and impartiality have 
succeeded to former suspicion ; — then what 
is of a higher character will gradually as- 
sert its rights, and the movement, which 
for so many centuries has been continually 
in a descending order, will become ascend- 
ing, as the impelling power of the spiritual 
faculty developed in the people, will at 
length overpower the inert mass, and again 
serve to elevate it. 

The rivalry between the nobility of merit 
and the nobility of birth, will then convert 
true honour into a prevailing impulse. 
Holding a middle station between religious 
belief and earthly comprehensibility, it will 

x 4 



812 GERMANY AND 

then receive intrinsic value from the vigo- 
rous foundation of merit, and current value 
from the agreement of society ; and may 
become a point of reunion of strong powers 
of will in times of danger or great move- 
ments. In proportion as the old nobility 
perceive that their true test is the test of 
merit, the desire which is natural to man, 
of transmitting his honour, like every other 
possession, to a worthy posterity, will again 
revive also in the plebeians. Honour* will 
not then lose itself as a mere wave in a 
stormy ocean, but go forth like a continuous 
stream throughout ages, and thereby be- 
come a still stronger bond of union. If 
this renovation of vigour, and this inherit- 
ance, at the same time, through many 
generations should be realised, then we 
should, as in ancient Rome, possess families 
who, having either descended to the people 
or risen from amongst them, as quiet and 
permanent types of character, endure be- 
yond the mere passing day, and continue 
to be estimated not only through them- 
selves, but also through the rich inherit- 
ance of old honours, always present in the 
remembrance of the people. They would 



THE REVOLUTION. 313 

attach the people to them both by inclina- 
tion and gratitude ; the acquisition of either 
of which is never even thought of in the 
present contemptible system. The time 
will then come, when all the different tribes 
of Germany will act in the spirit which 
even now dwells in them, perceiving that 
their multiplicity is a valuable possession 
which they alone enjoy of almost all the 
nations of the present day ; but that this 
blessing becomes a curse when destitute 
of any connecting unity ; and that as many 
a confederation has already proved itself 
insufficient in the exigencies of the times 
for the common freedom and security, this 
unity should again be exercised by a power- 
ful family, that the crown of Charlemagne 
may not with its burden oppress him whom 
his mantle fits, and who is in a condition 
to wield his sword. 

In the mean time the religious sense will 
again escape from its present quality, and 
men will once more acknowledge univer- 
sally that religion is not an old woman's 
tale told to the nations in their infancy, 
but the tie which holds minds together, the 
word of the creating Spirit of the world, 



314 GERMANY AND 

pronounced in human language ; that even 
nature unconsciously celebrates her mys- 
teries ; that the state is merely the ground- 
floor of the church ; and that public life 
and the cultivation of the sciences are di- 
vine worship. From the moral purity which 
still generally characterises the Catholic 
clergy in Germany, the higher sense and 
the enthusiasm calculated to dissolve the 
present deadness and numbness, and to 
communicate to forms their forgotten con- 
tents, may with great reason be expected 
to flourish again in that body. They will 
perceive that a dull and heavy obscurantism, 
which, in its foolish zeal, would persecute 
the light, the noblest gift of God, will not 
lead to this end. This would be an insult to 
wisdom, which has every where victoriously 
maintained its ground, which a confused 
knowledge only can disturb, and which a 
complete and thorough knowledge will al- 
ways secure and preserve. It would be an 
insult to that freedom which God has 
granted to man, which, when only partially 
enjoyed, leads occasionally to error, but 
when fully developed sets bounds and mea- 
sure to itself, when accompanied only by 



THE REVOLUTION. 315 

sincerity of heart. Let the Catholic clergy 
then kindle the torch in the sanctuary itself, 
which will disperse along with darkness the 
frivolity in which alone infidelity has ever 
struck root. The Protestant clergy will aid 
this endeavour by making a proper use of 
their freedom, and by ceasing to confound 
the self-willed and capricious doctrine that 
comes and goes with men with the eternal 
truth, which is suitable to all ages. Guided 
by the Scriptures, they will, in their pecu- 
liar manner, deduce, from the relations of 
finite personality, the relations of the in- 
finite. But they must first purify the scrip- 
tures from all the accessions of bigotry, sel- 
fishness, and worldly passions, that through 
the clear water of the precious stone the 
higher light may penetrate, which haughti- 
ness and pride, by agitating the mud of 
human conceit, too often obscure and 
cloud. 

The Sciences, if not pursued as a mere 
mechanical trade, dragging the cultivator 
down to the wretchedness of the earthly 
existence, but withdrawn, in the manner of 
ancient times, to the contemplation of the 
highest mystery, in philosophy as well as 



316 GERMANY AND 

religion, will no longer drag down the 
striving spirit with a heavy weight, but 
assist in bearing it aloft to its higher des- 
tination. The various confessions will then 
approximate to each other and their com- 
mon source, not formally, from humour, or 
with a view to promote any particular pur- 
pose entertained by power, which only 
serves to waken a dormant fanaticism ; but 
because a complete freedom bends itself to 
necessity. New fathers of the church will 
then arise, who, in a still greater degree 
than the old appropriated the knowledge 
of the Greeks, will obtain a mastery over 
the wisdom of the age, which will yield a 
ready obedience to its sovereign, and thus 
the sciences will again adorn their head 
with her starry crown. They will not at- 
tempt to found a system of priestcraft, 
which, under the pretence of sanctity, has 
nothing but worldly objects in view, and 
endeavours to pass, off common passions 
for the suggestions of a higher spirit, be- 
comes the slave of a craftv ambition, or 
revels in gross luxury and sensuality. This 
is all destroyed, torn asunder, and abo- 
lished, and never more will the age consent 



THE REVOLUTION. 317 

to its restoration. Bat a worthy and vener- 
able priesthood it will once more obtain, 
having, like every thing earthly, a root in 
earth, but whose domains lie in the mental 
kingdom which every day serves to enlarge, 
and from whose mouth the long-promised 
Comforter * so often looked for by the age, 
will speak to the people. 

These views may be ridiculed as the 
dreams of a sanguine folly, but Christianity, 
which changed the shape of the world, was 
founded on such folly, and the present spirit 
of a sharp, cold, worldly, prudence, in its re- 
ligious aphelion, will not surely be more 
immortal than the inspiration of earlier 
times in their warm perihelium. That 
lying and deceitful spirit, however, can 
point out no other way which does not lead 
to the effusion of blood, to civil war, insur- 
rection, and atrocity. Above all things, 
however, the hope of masked rapacity, 
which conceives, that by pursuing the ter- 
ritorial system, it may attain supreme domi- 
nion by a subjugation of the various tribes 

* " And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you 
another comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." 
St. John, xiv. 16. Trans. 



318 GERMANY AND 

from the awakened national feelings, and 
the numerous insurmountable obstacles 
which God has implanted in the nation, 
cannot fail to come to a shameful and dis- 
graceful end. A German republic is less 
fantastical, and the establishment of a 
federal state in the forms of the Ame- 
rican is much more probable, than that any- 
State will be allowed to take a lead over the 
rest. No one State is willing to consent 
to such an assumption on the part of an- 
other. Hence all by-ways are cut off 
by the very nature of things, and we can 
only follow the single, straight, historical 
road, which leads directly to one end. 
All opposition is fruitless, all attempts to 
impede it superfluous, all artifices are 
powerless, the path must be trod. It mat- 
ters not whether they tremble, or whether 
they are enraged, whether they have re- 
course to artifice or force, History will 
move on towards her accomplishment ; the 
overpowering flood will rush on, though 
all the Kings on earth seat themselves 
along the sea-shore. We ought, therefore, 
to make human will subservient to the 
Divine Council, if we wish to prevent it 



THE REVOLUTION. 319 

from being brought to shame. We ought 
to allow things to take their course, and 
not attempt, from above nor from below, 
to impede the progress of events. The 
nature of the German leads him to act with 
truth and justice, and whenever he departs 
from them, all that he does is characterised 
by awkwardness and stupidity, and un- 
attended with a blessing. 

In the first place, then, ye of the third 
Estate ! allow vourselves in no manner to 
deviate from the path of legality ! You 
have raised your voice against the phan- 
toms of arbitrary power, which despotic 
ministers and courtiers of foreign countries 
first devised for the attainment of their 
ends, which imperious mercenaries estab- 
lished, and which, when introduced into 
this country, abstract writers, strangers to 
every thing like life, and jurists, who every 
where justly deserve the reproach of having 
treacherously lent their aid to cheat the 
people out of their liberties, reduced to a 
pedantical form that blunted its sharpness 
indeed, but rendered it on that account 
the more detrimental to the public. While 
rising up against the unessential abstrac- 



520 GERMANY AND 

tion, which has thrust itself, like a ghost, 
between the monarchy and the people, you 
have demanded back your ancient impre- 
scriptible liberties, and you cannot fail to 
obtain them. You will no longer assess and 
pay according to the good pleasure of 
others, as if all the members of the cham- 
ber were their dependants and slaves ; you 
wish rather, as in former times, to supply 
the State with taxes voluntarily granted, 
and not imperiously demanded. You will 
no longer allow yourselves to be ordered 
out with the army on every feud, but are 
determined to confine your preparations 
and your services to the necessary defence 
of the country against foreign invasion, as 
your forefathers did before you. You will 
not receive justice from tribunals which 
lose themselves in empty forms and so- 
phistries ; you will henceforth allow your- 
selves to be tried only by Schopfen and 
juries. You wish that merit should ba- 
lance every distinction of rank, and that 
commerce, speech, and opinions, should be 
free as the air you breathe. You will not, 
in any one thing whatever, allow your- 
selves to be made the blind instruments of 



THE REVOLUTION. 321 

arbitrary power ; but in free submission 
alone, yield obedience to the laws to which 
you yourselves have previously consented. 
These are your rights, and they cannot be 
combated. Their concession is not a fa- 
vour, which can ever be postponed and 
delayed, and least of all, in an age which 
incessantly teems with new and most ruin- 
ous organisations and pretensions as with 
monsters. 

But these rights, so good and well founded 
in themselves, you ought not to injure by 
any illegal acts of your own. In so doing 
you would only gratify your enemies. If 
Heaven has overpowered the monstrous 
Titan who swallowed up the Revolution, 
and acted in all its dreadful power, what 
else can withstand it in this age ? Every 
attempt against your rights will be fruitless ; 
it is a striving against the stream of history : 
let the fools wear themselves out; when 
they suppose they have ascended a great 
way, they will land in a breathless condition 
lower down than the point from which they 
began to swim. On right and justice alone 
can authority rest, and if they attempt to 
trample on them, their complete impotence 

Y 



322 GERMANY AND 

will soon convince them of the error they 
have committed. All the armies on earth 
are unable to annihilate a single mathema- 
tical truth, and still less can they shake a 
single universal ethical law. All injustice 
is abandoned by God, who assists the just 
cause alone. Though power should be ar- 
rayed on the side of injustice, it soon in- 
volves itself in its own contradictions, 
becomes entangled in its own sophisms, 
ensnared in its own inconsistencies, till all 
escape becomes at length impossible. 

But then it is not the dead right which 
exists only on paper that can be main- 
tained ; the rights which have forced their 
way from the heart into life, can only, and 
will easily, be victorious. The more auda- 
cious the attempts of arbitrary power, the 
more closely ought you to stand by one 
another. If the light of all your eyes is 
always directed to one spot, a flame will be 
there collected as in a focus, which the 
most fire-proof will be unable to resist. 
Cease not to demand what belongs to you. 
Return incessantly to the same point ; but 
in your course take care, lest in your im- 
patience you should be tempted to overleap 



THE REVOLUTION. 323 

any of the intermediate steps, lest you 
should take a step in advance, which you 
may be compelled to measure back again. 
If you only stand up with courage and de- 
termination for your cause, the result must 
crown your endeavours. But while you 
demand your own rights, cease not to re- 
spect the rights of others ; and while you 
refuse to consent to any departure from 
the strictness of principle, do not refuse to 
proceed with equity in its application ; for 
theory is sharp as the edge of a sword, and 
devouring as a flame ; but all that is human 
is made up of opposites, and tempered by 
mild transitions, and its nature hates, like 
poison, all excess and intemperarice. Do 
not allow yourselves to be instigated into 
any foolish contest ; the very impurity of 
the source from which this instigation is- 
sues, ought to fill you with suspicion. 
While you are quarrelling, they are pluming 
themselves with the idea of carrying off the 
spoil. Do not believe that you can come 
into the enjoyment of a new freedom, with- 
out a new exertion, and that the good, with- 
out any effort on your part, will come to 
you in your sleep. The whole of the 

y 2 



324 GERMANY AND 

struggle of the present day can only have 
one rational meaning, namely, that it is the 
result of a determination to proceed with 
more spirit, life and ability, than in the 
former struggle. Proceed in this manner, 
then, and your exertions will also be 
crowned with better fortune. If you act 
otherwise, you will find yourselves miser- 
ably disappointed ; for constitutions are 
nothing without civic virtue. Had this 
been possessed by us, we should not have 
lost our freedom. The mere demand for 
its restoration, is not in itself a proof that the 
fitness for it has returned. The reproach- 
ful charge against the present age, that it 
is unwilling to obey, and yet knows not 
how to be free, is but too well founded. 
This is one great justification of the con- 
duct of the governments, amidst all the 
injustice of which they have been guilty ; 
for the reins of government cannot be 
given to the winds. The whole of the liber- 
ality of this generation has too often proved 
itself merely a masked arbitrary power. 
This has been frequently enough shown in 
the conduct of the most liberal, when en- 
abled to carry their own principles into 



THE REVOLUTION. 325 

execution. Whoever would have all for 
himself, and allow nothing to others, is a 
tyrant, and consequently a slave. Whether 
this disposition is shown by an individual, by 
an estate, or a corporation, it is the same 
thing, for freedom exists only in the mid- 
dle ; and the liberality which consists in 
taking only, without conceding any thing 
in return, is incompatible with it. 

Ye of the Nobility ! remember the two- 
fold nature which ought to be united in you ; 
the one inclined towards the monarchy, 
the other inclined towards the people. 
By devoting yourselves in latter times 
almost exclusively to the interests of the 
former ; by placing yourselves in a state 
of unconditional submission in the service 
of courts and in standing armies, the pecu- 
liar honour of your rank and condition dis- 
appeared from amongst the people, who 
could see in you only the slaves of territorial 
sovereignty. You shared with this territo- 
rial sovereignty the pillage of the empire, 
by appropriating to yourselves, in your fiefs, 
the fund allotted for war. When you 
reflect on these things, you will not surely 
shut your ears to equity in the present con- 
y 3 



326 -GERMANY AND 

test with the commons. No prescription, 
no antiquity of title, can maintain its ground 
against revolutions. They fly with rapidity 
over centuries to the origin of the abuse, 
and the French Revolution, in one instant? 
demanded back from the Barons the whole 
of their feudal possessions. Do not, there- 
fore, turn your backs on the equitable 
arrangement, which would concede to you 
your possessions, and refuses only to ac- 
knowledge the legality of the wrongs, which, 
through the corruption of the times, have 
become rights. Henceforward you ought 
to lay claim to no rights over persons ; in 
taxation, your ambition ought rather to be 
to contribute proportionally more than 
others, than less, as you wish to pass for 
more than them. As even territorial sove- 
reignty itself must consent to new arrange- 
ments, and make new concessions in every 
thing that relates to the constitution, you 
ought in nowise to withdraw yourselves 
from the just claims of the age for a renewal 
of the old covenants. But you have a good 
right to demand that the settlement should 
take place on the principle of an amicable 
arrangement; and you are also en titled to de- 



THE REVOLUTION. 327 

mand, that, when the principles have once 
been established, the necessary interval 
should be allowed for carrying them into 
execution. The more you prove that the 
honour of your rank and condition still lives 
within you, the more will this idea extort 
esteem even from your opponents ; but if 
you merely wish to exist as pensioners of the 
dissolved empire, your extirpation will then 
become a desirable object. Patch-work, 
such as later centuries have only furnished, 
is not required in the constitution. We 
want no diplomatic slurring over, no me- 
chanical divisions, no violent unions of ob- 
jects dissimilar in their nature, leaving all 
parties equally unsatisfied. All the spurious 
additions of a diseased age must be stript 
from the body of the State, that every organ 
may have what properly belongs to it; and 
the community may again flourish in health 
and vigour. But whoever would represent 
wicked abuses, seeks to perpetuate the dis- 
eased state of his country, and ought to be 
considered as an internal enemy, and even 
as the source of disease. Cover not, therefore, 
your unjust claims with your just rights, 
that your just rights may not be rejected 

t 4 



828 GERMANY AND 

along with your just claims. All that owes 
its existence only to abuse, and to defects 
in the constitution, finds no longer any 
favour in the eyes of public opinion. The 
folly of the empty pride to which mere con- 
ventional advantages gives rise, the puffed- 
up conceit of hollow vanity, the whole of 
the absurd and unintelligible pretensions, 
grounded only on nobility of extraction, 
(Junkerthum*), have become the fable and 
the jest of the age ; but a true, rightful, 
vigorous, and honourable nobility are every 
where wanting, and most of all in the high- 
est situations, where but too frequently the 



* It is hardly possible to convey, in English, the mean- 
ing of this word. In this country, nobility is confined 
to one individual in a family, all the rest falling into the 
rank of commoners ; but in Germany and the Continent 
in general, all the descendants of a noble family claim 
to be included in the nobility, who thus form a consider- 
able proportion of the nation. According to the Au- 
strian conscription lists, the male nobles of the German 
and Hungarian part of that empire amounted in number 
to 239,505, while the whole of the male mechanics, 
tradesmen and other inhabitants of towns, amounted only 
to 448,589. A Junker is a person of noble extraction, 
without any particular title, and the word is never used 
except with the view of expressing contempt. Trans. 



THE REVOLUTION. 329 

boldest, the most superficial, the most in- 
sipid and pitiful vulgarity, without dignity, 
decorum, or a trace of noble sentiments, 
appears only in a more glaring light from 
the frippery of its external decorations, and 
disgraces, on all occasions, the nation in the 
eyes of strangers. Such a nobility, not 
swoln with conceit in the tedious idleness 
of courts, nor boorish from a perpetual resi- 
dence in the country, can alone be found 
in an active public life, in the gymnas- 
tics of the chambers, and the arming of 
the people ; and such a school the nobles 
must seek, if they wish they should not be 
blotted out of the nation. 

Ye of the Clergy ! you are called on to 
preach to the people, obedience to magis- 
trates. Follow then this vocation. Teach 
the people to honour and reverence civil 
order, even in its deepest degradation ; to 
depart not from the paths of legality, and 
never to attempt, by insurrection, to burst 
with violence through the restraints of mo- 
rality. But advance at the same time into 
the presence of princes, and their councils ; 
and, under the protection of your sacred 
office, warning and punishing them like 



330 GERMANY AND 

their conscience, endeavour to awaken 
them to a sense of their duty. Admonish 
them to tempt God no longer, and after 
the signs which he has already wrought, and 
which these necromancers have expounded 
agreeably to their vain knowledge, that 
they ask no more from him, lest at last 
his wrath be kindled, and he send them a 
sign which shall consume them and their 
generation. The object is not merely the 
obtaining of constitutions, for whatever 
may be their wishes, constitutions they can 
no longer withhold ; but these alone, as the 
experience of the last age has proved, are 
little in themselves, mere sounding brass 
and tinkling cymbals, so long as the spirit 
remains against which they were invoked, 
namely that arbitrary system, which pro- 
ceeds with the most complete absence of 
consciousness of itself, that violence which 
forcibly bursts through all our relations, 
that forgetfulness of Germany, and that 
ignorance of all higher and nobler motives 
in public affairs, that endless centralisation 
and writing, that system of financial delu- 
sion, which a perpetual state of war in the 
midst of peace has introduced, and that 



THE REVOLUTION. 331 

dreadfully unlawful state of things, which, 
if not so characterised by violence as in the 
times which followed the destruction of the 
empire, so much condemned and decried, 
is yet nearly equally insupportable. The 
people call for their rights, which arbitrary 
power withholds from them ; they have 
exposed their documents and their charters. 
History is on their side, and gives testimony 
in their favour ; all divine and human laws 
are with them, and honour and the sanctity 
of contracts, and the inviolability of oaths. 
All amicable means have been attempted, all 
lawful respites have expired. The Princes 
have been placed by God in the judg- 
ment seat; he has made them the dispens- 
ers and the representatives of his eternal 
justice, and woe to those who will not do 
what their sacred office imposes on them, 
who are deaf to the voice of justice, and 
turn away from well-founded complaints. 
Say to them, that all the responsibility of 
the future rests on their head, that they 
will be called to account before the judg- 
ment seat of God, both for the wickedness 
they have done, and the good which, though 
commanded, they have omitted to do. Re- 



332 GERMANY AND 

mind them how often God, during the last 
age, has visited their omission on Germany, 
and that all their passive well-meaningness 
was accounted as nothing in the day of his 
anger. Tell them, that if in their elevated 
station, they confound and perplex right 
and wrong, lawfulness and tyranny, justice 
and violence, the same confusion will soon 
be communicated to the mass, whose 
strength is alone kept under by the mea- 
sure of the middle ; and that when the 
irritated feeling of right, which has no 
where found justice, has once in its fury 
determined to do justice to itself, the con- 
test will soon be at an end. No plan of 
conspiracy has been found on paper. Nay, 
after the charges of high treason, which 
have been preferred before the eyes of all 
Europe, they have been obliged to deny 
officially that even any enquiry into a 
conspiracy took place. But the fire, though 
smothered, does not the less continue to 
burn in the hearts of men ; and from time 
to time a small flame darts forth, as a 
sign of the subterraneous burning, which 
is daily spreading, and awfully hollowing 
the ground beneath our feet. It is, there- 



THE REVOLUTION. 33 



2 



fore, adviseable to grant justice to those 
that demand only their rights, lest a longer 
delay should compel them to comply also 
with the demands of those who wish for 
more than their rights. The object of the 
better disposed persons in the present day 
is not to undermine authority, or to execute 
every audacious innovation which has en* 
tered into any disordered head. This in- 
curable rage for innovation is possessed by 
arbitrary power, and it is against such a 
rage that the age has declared itself. That 
a usurper, to whom the bloody inheritance 
of a revolution devolved, should turn its 
own demagogical arts against itself, is 
natural enough ; but what have legitimate 
princes, good-natured and well-meaning as 
ours in general are, to do with the shadow 
of a power which a tyrant only can really 
possess and exercise, and which for them is 
only the shirt of Nessus, which the Cen- 
taur, having saturated with blood, left them 
in death, as a legacy of perdition. The 
ruling houses, who have accompanied the 
people from the depth of centuries, who 
are one and the same with them, and united 



334 GERMANY AND 

with them through a series of so marij 
generations, ought not to rule like em- 
perors, by the bayonet, by the dead letter, 
by prohibitions and cabinet orders ; but 
like fathers in the circle of their families, 
through the reverence of age, the love of 
blood-relationship, the confidence which 
wisdom and justice, frequently proved, never 
fails to inspire, the esteem which moral 
dignity every where commands, and the 
fondness which hereditary mildness in- 
fuses into all hearts. These are motives 
of which the present age is perfectly sus- 
ceptible, should confidence again be re- 
stored ; but there is scarcely a trace in it 
of the brutal superstition, which, when 
limited and fallible human wisdom assumes 
the privileges of omniscience, when impo- 
tence lays claim to omnipotence, and in 
the agitation of personal passions would be 
thought to possess infallibility, is ready to 
acquiesce in the^e arrogant demands. The 
age demands that an end should be put to 
this unworthy and degrading idolatry ; that 
the wind of vain theories should no longer 
sweep through the dry leaves of protocols, 



THE REVOLUTION. 335 

but that human understanding should take 
council even in human things, and that life 
and the spirit should again assert their 
rights in those cases where sad experience 
has shown that their assistance is most in- 
dispensable. All this you should say to 
them, and still more where necessary, that 
they may acknowledge the wonders which 
Heaven has done, and prostrate themselves 
before the world of ideas, which has dis- 
closed itself in this age. Twenty years 
have they fought against these ideas, and 
been beaten almost to extermination ; and 
when God at length took compassion on 
their calamity and their humiliation, and 
again sent forth a sign to them, they then 
trampled in turn over the enemy who had 
changed parts with them. Their au- 
thority is merely an idea of the same rank 
with other ideas, their consecration and 
anointment took place also in the name of 
the idea ; whoever among them denies the 
authority of ideas, sinks to the rank of com- 
mon mortals. He alone continues to rule 
who bears his head in their ether ; but 
whoever breathes only with difficulty and 



336 Germany And the revolution. & Zc > 

pain in earthly vapours, must serve as a 
slave, were it only to his own errors and 
passions, and History will blot out his name 
from her books. 

Discite justitiam mofniti, et non teranere Divos ! 



THE END. 



Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, 
Printers- Street, London. 



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